Quotes About Identity

The typical Cuban machismo has attained alarming proportions in Miami. I did not want to stay too long in that place, which was like a caricature of Cuba, the worst of Cuba: the eternal gossip, the chicanery, the envy.

The exile is a person who, having lost a loved one, keeps searching for the face he loves in every new face and, forever deceiving himself, thinks he has found it.

Each life is a history of affinities through which we find ourselves and are "defined" by others.

Who I am hates who I've been.

let's get, emotional girls to all wear mood rings

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.

Ik weet een station in een onbekende stad kan soms vertrouwder zijn dan het trappenhuis van je eigen woning

Your thoughts had disintegrated into isolated words- key words, which you kept on mumbling, because you were afraid you would cease to exist if you forgot these words as well

Ik was een naakte letter zonder alfabet

Waarom zou hij zich verzetten? Uit morele overwegingen? Kom nu; als je daaraan deed, kon je beter de rest van je leven thuis blijven zitten met dichtgespijkerde ramen en de deur op de grendel - dan had je een kleine kans dat je een fatsoenlijk mens bleef; alleen was er dan niemand die wist hoe fatsoenlijk je was.

Por lo general, nunca nos ha parecido suficiente ser lo que somos: falta algo y los deseos van en su busca.

Voler une ombre, dépouiller un souvenir, est-ce vraiment voler ?

L'homme croit mourir pour défendre sa terre, sa femme, sa liberté, ses idées, alors qu'il meurt simplement parce qu'il est de trop.

And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. [But how mistakenly!] I am not that assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not a subtle penetrating air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath or anything at all that I can image. I am supposing all these things to be nothing. Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am a something.

Am I so tied to a body and senses that I am incapable of existing without them?

Mind and soul of the man is entirely different from the body.

I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that all these were nothing. Without changing that supposition I find that I only leave myself certain of the fact that I am somewhat.

Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am)

To think? That's it. It is thought. This alone cannot be detached from me. I am, I exist; that is certain.

So far, I have been a spectator in this theatre which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.

I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

I am, I exist.

On the other hand, when too much time is occupied in traveling, we become strangers to our native country; and the over curious in the customs of the past are generally ignorant of those of the present.

Therefore from the fact alone that I know that I exist and that, at the same time, I notice absolutely nothing else that belongs to my nature apart from the single fact that I am a thinking thing, I correctly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing.