Quotes About Identity

The true test of a man, the beginning of his redemption, actually starts when he can no longer rely on what he's used all his life. The real journey begins when the false self fails.

For after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion . . . and a man no longer believes he is a man.

A woman in her glory, a woman of beauty, is a woman who is not striving to become beautiful or worthy or enough.

Your feminine heart has been created with the greatest of all possible dignities—as a reflection of God's own heart.

Who am I really? The answer to that question is found in the answer to another. What is God's heart toward me, or, how do I affect him? If God is the Pursuer, the Ageless Romancer, the Lover, then there has to be a Beloved, one who is the Pursued. This is our role in the story.

In order to understand how a man receives a wound, you must understand the central truth of a boy's journey to manhood: Masculinity is bestowed. A boy learns who he is and what he's got from a man, or the company of men. He cannot learn it any other place. He cannot learn it from other boys, and he cannot learn it from the world of women.

We are hiding, every last one of us. Well aware that we, too, are not what we were meant to be, desperately afraid of exposure, terrified of being seen for what we are and are not, we have run off into the bushes. We hide in our office, at the gym, behind the newspaper and mostly behind our personality. Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.

To put it bluntly, your flesh is a weasel, a poser, and a selfish pig. And your flesh is not you.

Let the world feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it.

The real you is on the side of God against the false self. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world. The man who wants to live valiantly will lose heart quickly if he believes that his heart is nothing but sin.

In your life you are William Wallace—who else could be? There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arena you've been called to. If you leave your place in the line, it will remain empty. No one else can be who you are meant to be. You are the hero in your story. Not a bit player, not an extra, but the main man.

Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

I'll let you in on a little secret: your heart is made for the kingdom of God. This might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you about yourself: your heart only thrives in one habitat, and that safe place is called the kingdom of God.

We reframe everything by one simple choice: I am accepting God's invitation to become a man. From there we interpret jobs, money, relationships, flat tires, bad dates, even our play time as the context in which the boy is becoming a man. We take an active role, asking our Father to speak to us, speak to our identity, to validate us. We step into our fears and accept "hardship as discipline

To put it bluntly, your flesh is a weasel, a poser, and a selfish pig. And your flesh is not you. Did you know that? Your flesh is not the real you.

The story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.

Sartre felt that Hell is other people, but precisely the opposite is true. Hell is being left alone forever with no other reality than your own consciousness of yourself. It is being locked in a casket of your own internal chaos with no hope of a window, or door leading in light from outside to give you a moment's respite from yourself. Hell is the refusal of the gift of the other.

You have only one life to live.It would be best to live your own.

You must ask God what he thinks of you, and you must stay with the question until you have an answer. The battle will get fierce here. This is the last thing the Evil One wants you to know.

A man whose identity flows out of deep validation doesn't wilt under criticism. He enjoys applause when it comes but frankly isn't desperate for it. He can walk away from work at five o'clock; he doesn't measure his success by how much money he makes. We grow into this man, to be sure; I'm not setting a new standard of perfection. But what I am describing

I am looking for my heart.

The whole, vast world was incomplete without me. Creation reached its finishing touch in me.

What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). We need you.

Joseph Nicolosi