Quotes About Self-discovery

I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?

he cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one

Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back! Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping, I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; And your very flesh shall be a great poem…

I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you, you must travel for yourself.

I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

Re-examine all that you have been told... Dismiss that which insults your soul.

You have not known what you are—you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;

Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (Leaves of Grass preface)

I am larger, better than I thought, / I did not know I held so much goodness

What do I know of life? what of myself? I know not even my own work past or present

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem...

Is this ten a touch? Quivering me to a new identity

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity

Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.

Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

Many teens will see themselves in Myers' account.

The Autobiography of a Yogi

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, and Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa. They