Quotes About Self-discovery

You leave the place you're from, you have to. But you also need to have it stay in you for a long time. It is your center.

Analysis has a way of unravelling the self: the longer you pull on the thread, the more flaws you find.

Cica in fiecare grasan se afla cate-un slabanog care se lupta sa iasa la lumina, iar eu unul ii aud strigatele inabusite ori de cate ori ma uit in oglinda.

What you're reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography.

Cain wonders for the first time, whether a child is born with the man already inside him waiting to emerge; or if there is only blankness, a void inside ready to be filled with whatever might be placed there.

Enemies, like friends, told you who you were.

So long as we are driven by the need to make up for our needs; by the restless sense that we are not yet fully assured of our place in the world and our hold on its swarming phenomena; so long as there is more to be discovered and made, more to grasp for and make real, we must go on inventing ourselves.

Does the protagonist deny the irreconcilable conflict? Does she lie about it- to herself and others? Does she make a choice between two irreconcilable desires? Then clearly her choice of one over the other reveals something essential about her that was not apparent at the beginning of the story. The protagonist-sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously- must reckon then with a new understanding of her character and who she really is and her place in and relationship to the world.

In truth, what you actually are is God's Love Manifested into being. That's all this God is looking to receive from you, your love given freely from your own heart and in doing so, in that act of freely giving back your love, you come to know who you are.

People don't want to calm down because then they see things they sort of knew but didn't want to face.

A solid sense of self develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what's right, and earning your own self-respect.

When we stand up and confront ourselves in ways our parents have not, a desire for justice makes it harder to forgive them in some ways. However, the increased differentiation this endeavor provides allows one to better self-soothe, to validate one's own experience, thereby unhooking the need for confession from one's parent. At this point, forgiveness becomes an act of self-caring and a deliberate decision to get on with one's life.

Behind the naive vanities, the daydreams, they had very badly wanted to be writers. Had wanted it without knowing at all what it was they wanted, their fervor making up for their ignorance. His older self was cooler, more noncommittal, for he had learned that to publicize your goals means running the risk of falling short of them.

There was my life before I told a strange woman in a negligee that I was a homosexual, and now there would be my life after, two chapters so dissimilar in style and content that they might have been written by different people.

After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn't afford. Unless, of course, social injustice is you thing, in which case- knock yourself out. The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't. Won't people turn away if they know the real me? you wonder.

My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.

Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape." Is there a richer or more complex story than that?

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

What, you finally ask yourself, do I do now? Your entire recovery—all that passes for drug treatment in this country—has been about defining what you don't want to be, what you fear and dread and need to avoid.

In the midst of prosperity the mind is elated, and in prosperity a man forgets himself; in hardship he is forced to reflect on himself, even though he be unwilling.

No te puedes imaginar la cantidad de años en que mastiqué en silencio lo que sentía, lo que padecía, con todos mis complejos. Hasta que entendí que deshumanizarme era salvarme.

Ningún hijo quiere conocer a fondo a sus padres. Sería demoledor. Todos se creen el primer humano sobre la tierra.