Quotes About Identity

Thuvia of Ptarth was having difficulty in determining the exact status of the Prince of Helium in her heart. She

P56-his reason told him that he was of a different race from his wild and hairy companions

I never knew my father, my mother was an ape

You didn't find any trace of her? asked d'Arnot. // Tarzan shook his head. None. In the jungle, I could have found her; but here –-here, in civilization, a man cannot even find himself.

shouldn't they? She had given her maiden name

Since there is so much that you know about me, can you tell me something about yourself? Some true thing? She asked, watching him, realizing that she knew nothing of the actual man that hid beneath the blandly smiling, smooth exterior that he presented. Some true thing? He laughed. Oh my dear, there is no true thing about me at all.

I even wrote a white-bear poem. It began Ghost bear wanders, always alone; king of the north, dispensing death from his traveling throne. It was shortly after this effort that I decided I wouldn't be a poet after all.

Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.

It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.

Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!

You thought I was a lovelorn mistress and I was really just an expensive prostitute.

it is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

She herself had grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer than another: there was no center of earth pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others.

Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met.

The bounds of a personality are not reproducible by a sharp black line, but...each of us flows imperceptibly into adjacent people and things.

I had written short stories that were thought worthy of preservation! Was it the same insignificant I that I had always known? Any one walking along the streets might go into any bookshop, and say: 'Please give me Edith Wharton's book'; and the clerk, without bursting into incredulous laughter, would produce it, and be paid for it, and the purchaser would walk home with it and read it, and talk of it, and pass it on to other people to read!

What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, when love was dancing in her veins?

Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper. We're like patterns stenciled on a wall. Can't you and I strike out for ourselves, May?

She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modeling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses.

Oh, Gerty, I wasn't meant to be good.