Quotes About Identity

We must be our own before we can be another's.

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

We pass for what we are.

Who you are is speaking so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.

People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own, quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in a world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority

Do not say things. Who you are thunders over you all the while so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

We go to Europe to be Americanized.

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.

Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

FOR EVERY STOIC WAS A STOIC BUT WHERE IN CHRISTENDOM IS THE CHRISTIAN?

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.