Self-discovery QuotesSelf-discovery quotes address all aspects of examining our inner world. The process of self-discovery also leads to self-actualization. Who are we? What have we forgotten about ourselves and our mission on earth? Why are we afraid?Read more... Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can be. Morris Adler As you begin to pay attention to your own stories and what they say about you, you will enter into the exciting process of becoming, as you should be, the author of your own life, the creator of your own possibilities. Mandy Aftel Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. Alan Alda Self education is, I firmy believe, the only kind of education there is. Isaac Asimov To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Henri Bergson Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be. Robert Brault I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom. Les Brown The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song. Ralph Brum I am comforted by life’s stability, by earth’s unchageableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us. Pearl S. Buck Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Buddha Doubt everything. Find your own light. Buddha Love yourself and be awake today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, then teach others, and so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked you must first do the harder thing--straighten yourself. You are the only master. Who else? Subdue yourself and discover your master. Buddha Truths cannot be acquired from words out of other people’s mouths. Before Truths can be internalized, they must come from one’s own realizations and practices. Through a lifetime of personal practice, human beings are capable of revealing all of the secrets of the cosmic essence. You are your own best judge. Buddha To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself. Sophy Burnham We don’t always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail…We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart. Julia Cameron The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Joseph Campbell In the midst of winter, I finally learned – that there was in me an invincible summer. Albert Camus I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows. Emily Carr Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions. Edgar Cayce Crises refine life. In them you discover what you are. Allen K. Chalmers How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. Coco Chanel Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Pema Chodron A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity….one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else. Dalai Lama Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself. Miles Davis It was so important for me to lose everything, because I found out what the most important thing is, which is to be true to yourself. Ellen DeGeneres I write to discover what I think. Joan Didion We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light. Mary Dunbar The greatest discoveries are those that shed light unto ourselves. Ralph Waldo Emerson To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. Clarissa Pinkola Estes Creativity is an act of self-discovery. Sebastian Esteverena Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them. Marilyn Ferguson The more one forgives himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. Viktor Frankl Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves. Robert Frost The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Gandhi If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe We all need to look into the dark side of our nature- that’s where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we’re busy denying. Sue Grafton Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves. Germaine Greer If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us. Hermann Hesse The true profession of man is to find his way to himself. Hermann Hesse The more in vibrational sync you are with who you really are, then the more you are allowing only those things that you’re wanting, and the less resistance there is. And the less resistance there is, then the less delay between the idea of the thought and the receiving of it. Abraham-Hicks The me I see is the me I'll be, but the me I feel is the me that's real. Brian Hill Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering. James Hillman There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain or improving, and that’s your own self. Aldous Huxley You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don't, you experience a sense of helplessness, paralysis, and depression-which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self. Susan Jeffers Quit putting yourself in a little box by trying to live consistently with your past and explaining every little action you take. BE YOU. Fully. In this moment. Independent of what others may or may not 'expect' from you. Brian Johnson A book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us. Franz Kafka Love is who we are without our stories. Byron Katie When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough. Byron Katie I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight, silence would teach him the joys of sound. Helen Keller Doing work you love is the dizzying path of saying yes to yourself and yes to a brilliant, hidden self you do not yet know. Tama J. Kieves We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. Martin Luther King, Jr. In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself. Krishnamurti Our world is incomplete until each one of us discovers what moves us - our passion. No other person can hear our calling. We must listen and act on it for ourselves. Richard J. Leider The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt. Max Lerner A soulmate is the one person whose love is powerful enough to motivate you to meet your soul, to do the emotional work of self-discovery, of awakening. Kenny Loggins After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. Sophia Loren Art is about energy positive and negative. All art has the power to heal because it helps us see who we are, and what we resist. Shirley MacLaine Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses. Eric Maisel Realize how good you really are. Og Mandino A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization. Abraham Maslow What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. Abraham Maslow Trust the process of the subtle push toward art and creative expression from inside you – it is the gentle call of your heart and renewed search for soul. It is an opening to expansion of your expressive abilities and the discovery of hidden limitations ready to be challenged. Be open to what it means, it has many possibilities for action in every part of your life. Ultimately it will lead to significant personal changes – to living life in a new way with new tools of creative expression. Donald William Mathews Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves. Rollo May Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton Can you imagine experiencing the world as a great sandbox given for us to play in like we did as children? As we play, we can also open ourselves to the exploration of our edges, always creating new adventures of self-exploration as we let go of old out-dated beliefs about ourselves. Judith-Annette Milburn The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge. Stephen Nachmanovitch One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up. Friedrich Nietzsche Dreams are illustrations…from the book your soul is writing about you. Marsha Norman Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. Sharon O'Brien Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves. Carol Pearson Know thyself. Plato The life which is not examined is not worth living. Plato The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. Marcel Proust Goals help focus you on areas in both your personal and professional life that are important and meaningful, rather than being guided by what other people want you to be, do, or accomplish. Catherine Pulsifer Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are. Bernice Johnson Reagon Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. Bernice Johnson Reagon Try to put well into practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about. Rembrandt Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are. Rachel Naomi Remen An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature. Renoir It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. Agnes Repplier Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating – the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to – you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Sogyal Rinpoche You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. Anthony Robbins You must begin to trust yourself. If you do not then you will forever be looking to others to prove your own merit to you, and you will never be satisfied. You will always be asking others what to do, and at the same time, resenting those from whom you seek such aid. Jane Roberts And you? When will you begin your long journey into yourself? Rumi Journey from the self to the Self and find the mine of gold. Leave behind what is sour and bitter and move toward the sweet. Rumi Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in the other way of looking. Rumi Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths! Rumi Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Rumi You are always your own best guru, your own best teacher, the answers are always inside you. Sathya Sai Baba Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. Saint Augustine Insight occurs when, and to the degree that, one knows oneself. Andrew Schneider Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. William Shakespeare Sometimes in your life you will go on a journey. It will be the longest journey you have ever taken. It is the journey to find yourself. Katherine Sharp An unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates Look and you will find it-what is unsought will go undetected. Sophocles I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly. William Stafford Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Dreams are the touchstones of our personality. Henry David Thoreau Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. Henry David Thoreau All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. James Thurber There is a positive you and there is a negative you. When you begin to realize which you is responsible for specific actions that you take, you can finally eliminate the negative and build upon the positive. Michelle C. Ustaszeski How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? Vincent Van Gogh The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is giving your gift away. David Viscott We must cultivate our garden. Voltaire Don’t rush into any kind of relationship. Work on yourself. Feel yourself, experience yourself and love yourself. Do this first and you will soon attract that special loving other. Russ Von Hoelscher In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. Alice Walker When you look for the good in others, you discover the best in yourself. Martin Walsh Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. Alan Watts Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. Oscar Wilde Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves. Marianne Williamson Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one. Marianne Williamson A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself. Oprah Winfrey It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about. Oprah Winfrey Every heart has a hidden treasure. A secret wish. A silent dream. A special goal to long for. Jill Wolf Return from Self-discovery Quotes and Sayings about Self-actualization to Quotes Listed by Subject
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