Define Me Quotes & Sayings

Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. — John Shelby Spong

Lord Jesus, thank You that my identity and worth is firmly rooted in You. My job doesn't define me, my relationships don't define me, and my various roles don't define me. I praise You for declaring me holy and dearly loved. You paid the highest price for my soul. How I thank You that I have value and significance in You. I am Your masterpiece, and You have gifted me uniquely for the roles You desire for me to play in Your kingdom. Thank You that I don't need to compare my gifts to the gifts of others in order to feel special. In Your kingdom, I am a royal priest/priestess. I praise You that I am a coheir with Christ and have inherited every blessing through Him. (Col. 3:12; 1 Cor. 6:12; Eph. 2:10; Isa. 43:4; Rom. 8:17) — Becky Harling

I can't define "God," so to be open to the mystical and mystery of God is a natural part of myself. So people criticize me for not being what they are, and I say, it's working for me and has worked for me and continues to work for me, in a way that fills me with a sense of peace and contentment about what God means to me. — Oprah Winfrey

Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me. — Charles Bradlaugh

My mother wanted me to understand that as a woman I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to, that I didn't have to use sex or sexuality to define myself. — Suzanne Vega

It is quite widely known that I like shoes. This is not something that defines me as either a woman or a politician, but it has come to define me in the eyes of the newspapers. I wore a pair of leopard-print kitten heels to a Conservative Party Conference a few years ago and the papers have continued to focus on my feet ever since. — Theresa May

I don't really understand it even now, It does have an angle which is attached to something quite primal in girls. I guess people want it to define them, like 'I'm a Twilight fan.' That's crazy to me. I think people really just like being part of a crowd. There's something just tremendously exciting about hyping yourself up to that level. — Robert Pattinson

I must be very complex, judging by the number of days determined to define me. — Spuds Crawford

My job doesn't define my kids in any way. When we go to places, it's about them and it's about us as a family. I think they're proud of me, but I'm just Dad. — Steve Carell

Here's to everyone who has survived something devastating
something that shattered your self-confidence and distorted your world in one blow. Whether you were fierce in the face of it or fell to pieces or shoved it out of sight for years
I don't care how you got here. Every day you are stronger. Every day you are healing. Every day that you survive, you are telling that event, that person, that illness, that memory: YOU DO NOT DEFINE ME. Keep on.
Acknowledgements — Tammara Webber

In my case, I thoroughly enjoy running 100-odd miles a week. If I didn't I wouldn't do it. Who can define happiness? To some, happiness is a warm puppy or a glass of cold beer. To me, happiness is running in the hills with my mates around me. — Ron Clarke

I want to define success by redefining it. For me it isn't that solely mythical definition - glamour, allure, power of wealth, and the privilege from care. Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny. — Anita Roddick

I'm trying to learn how to listen to people and how not to think that this is all I am. It's not going to change the fact that at home I'm going to put away the clean dishes, and I'm going to have to be nice to my siblings. It encourages me, but it doesn't define me. — Bethany Dillon

What draws me to roles, I think, are moments - moments that define character, where so much more of the story is told in just a moment - a look, a line, a short scene, but something that speaks a volume, something that speaks to me. — Nathan Fillion

Oments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible's puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn't have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That's one way I'd define the feeling of faith now. — Krista Tippett

I don't know how to choose work that illuminates what my life is about. I don't know what my life is about and don't examine it. My life will define itself as I live it. The movies will define themselves as I make them. As long as the theme is something I care about at the moment, it's enough for me to start work. Maybe work itself is what my life is about. — Sidney Lumet

I think part of being an artist is having the ability to define your own responsibilities. I certainly wouldn't prescribe any. As far as I'm concerned, my biggest responsibility is to my own imagination. We're all conduits. Art preceded me, and it'll be here long after I'm gone. — Pierre Coupey

People used to define me as a futurist designer, but, you know, the future is now for me. — Nicolas Ghesquiere

I never define depression, clinical or otherwise. It's the basis of most life, it seems to me, in the modern world. We're all depressed. — Terry Gilliam

I struggle in these situations not to let my madness govern me, and to let the positive aspects of my character define my life. — Russell Brand

I think my interest in risk is pretty high, a lot higher than I think a lot of other people who are just looking for something to kind of define themselves, give them a set of fingerprints, and certainly is better for the pocketbook. For me it's always about trying new things and wanting to explore something else and something new of myself and of actors I really like. — David Gordon Green

We declare, assert, define and pronounce to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is to every creature altogether necessary for salvation ... I have the authority of the King of Kings. I am all in all, and above all, so that God Himself and I, the Vicar of Christ, have but one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do. What therefore, can you make of me but God? — Pope Boniface VIII

The success doesn't define you. The success isn't what gave you the edge in the first place. The failure didn't give me the edge, either. — Richard Sherman

Success means different things in different parts of my life, but overall if I have to define ultimately what success means.. the bottom line.. then for me it's if the family is healthy and happy. — Phil McGraw

Failure to conform to social norms. I prefer to define my sociopathy as a set of traits that inform my personality but don't define me: I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions, I am strategic and canny, I am intelligent and confident and charming, but I also struggle to react appropriately to other people's confusing and emotion-driven social cues. — M.E. Thomas

Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women. As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be. — Zainab Salbi

Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write. — Milan Kundera

You gonna tuck me in?"
She stifled the grin. Opportunistic, determined idiot. "You gonna behave?"
"Define 'behave. — Elizabeth Hunter

I think it's better to be comfortable in your skin than to be miserable being who you are. Sure, the meth is horrible. It ruins people from the inside out. It's a waiting game
it's not a matter of if it destroys you, but rather a matter of when it will. I've made it this far. I'm not sending a message that it's "cool" to be on drugs and tell everyone about it. I don't sum myself up as a drug addict and a hooker. That's not what I am. Those are juts things I do, they don't define me. Jobs and addictions do not make us who we are. — Ashly Lorenzana

That is not my car!"
"Correction. You used to drive a falling apart Toyota. B.A."
Had his lips just brushed her hair? She shivered. And though she knew better than to ask, she did it anyway.
"Okay. You got me. What's B.A.?"
"Before. Adam. After Adam, you drive a BMW. I take care of what is mine. That Toyota wasn't safe."
Figured that arrogant beast would define himself as the dawning of an epoch.
"I'm not yours. It was too, and you can't just go around stealing."
"I didn't, and I filled out the paperwork myself. — Karen Marie Moning

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me. — Oprah Winfrey

I'm definitely responsible for the image that I put out there. But it does become frustrating, because I don't want 'sexy' to be my defining characteristic. I'd love for my ambition and will and intellect and sense of humour to define me as well. — Eva Mendes

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself. — Raf Simons

I do not let other people define me. I am who I am, and that is an intelligent and gracious human being. And as such, I do not drop to the level of bullies and trade insult for insult. — Wen Spencer

I don't sit under the tattoo gun unless I'm sold on it completely and it will define me as a person. — Yelawolf

To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words. — Jeanette Winterson

Asperger's doesn't define me. It's a condition that I have to live with and work through, but I feel more relaxed about myself. People will have a greater understanding of who I am and why I do the things I do. — Susan Boyle

I'm used to the security of living behind my online profiles and the clip art advertisdements I create to define me. I can be whoever I want to be in that world. I can be funny, deep, pensive, eccentric. I can be the best version of myself. I can make all the right decisions. I can delete my flaws by pressing a button.
In the real world anything can happen. It's like stepping onto an icy surface
you have to adjust your footing or you'll slip and fall. Your movements become rigid and unsure because behind all the fancy gadgets and all that digital armor, you realize you're just flesh and bones. — Katie Kacvinsky

To me, the counterculture was always what I grew up with the hippies in the late '60s. But, however you define it, it's really the excesses of youth and it's something that everyone goes through to some extent. Or if they don't, they should do. — Derek Ridgers

It was painful to contemplate the distance between the future of accomplishment I'd imagined for myself twenty years earlier ... it was painful to understand that the cushion of exceptionality invoked by the drug had made me oblivious to my inertia. And it was painful to have to define myself again, at an age when most people are happy in their own skins. — Ann Marlowe

I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity. — Paul Auster

How do you define difficult?"
"By your presence."
She grinned fully, delighted to feel the tension
dissipate. "Now you are just flattering me for no
reason."
He grunted.
"On the contrary," she said, as if his grunt had
been a worded response. "It was most flattering."
He stared at her.
"What? Did you think I wouldn't figure out how to
interpret your grunts? — Anne Mallory

Life is subjective as far as memories are concerned. I mean, what pieces of your own life do you really remember? Some good times, some bad times definitely, but mostly you remember those times that really stand out, those times that define who you are as an individual. Now's the time my life flashes before me - flickering recollections, vacations, holidays, friendships, the moments that made a difference. Mostly I remember that weekend with Kaylee. — Megan Bostic

Life is both a particle and a wave, Lacey taught me, and also it's neither. But only when no one is watching. Once you measure it, it has to choose. It was the act of witnessing that turned nothing into something, collapsed possibility clouds into concrete and irrevocable truth. I'd only pretended to understand before, but I understood now: When no one was watching, I was a cloud. I was all possibilities. — Robin Wasserman

Don't try to define me — Veronica Roth

Promise me that no matter what, you will never be ashamed of who you are, no matter how bad you want to be. And this might not make sense to you right now, but I want you to promise me that you will never let the things your daddy does to you define and separate you from who you are. Promise me that you will never lose Hope. — Colleen Hoover

To me, what I define as defiance, in some ways, is knowing the "reality" and having the ability to possess a realist mindstate yet still working towards the fantasy and still being childish. While still having the understanding and capacity that would generally inspire pessimism: some sort of more realist perspective that I think most people classify as adult. Anything like that and anything that's sort of fun. — Alex Ebert

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees. — Lawrence Block

Not that I was incapable of friendship. 'Don't be shy', the teachers coaxed. I was not shy, only extremely choosy. And Denise shone like a diamond. If you had to ask me to define paradise, I would have said a desert island which Denise could visit, on a boat. — Anneli Rufus

I began thinking about why am I constructing almost a shadow father or ghost father in my head into Graham Greene in response to the father who created me? What's going on here? I think a part of my sense is it's every boy's story. When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with. — Pico Iyer

I wear my Viking helmet because the horns define how sharp my brains are. If you try to rub me the wrong way, I will stick you with both of my horns. — Flavor Flav

Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama's teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world. — Stephen Batchelor

Women have to work much harder to make it in this world. It really pisses me off that women don't get the same opportunities as men do, or money for that matter. Because lets face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define our values and to define what's sexy and what's feminine and that's bullshit. At the end of the day, it's not about equal rights, it's about how we think. We have to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. — Beyonce Knowles

There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn't much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn't want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn't one of the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn't clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn't happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn't worry about it. It didn't define me. We're always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new purpose. — John William Tuohy

And so of course we won't define 'biblical womanhood' well using a list of chores or a job description, a schedule or income level. After all, healthy God-glorifying homes look as different as the image bearers that entered into the covenant, biblical doesn't mean a baptized version of any culture, ancient or modern.
No, I am a biblical woman because I live and move and have my being in the daily reality of being a follower of Jesus, living in the reality of being loved, in full trust of my Abba. I am a biblical woman because I follow in the footsteps of all the biblical women who cam before me.
Biblical womanhood isn't so different from biblical personhood. Biblical personhood becomes a dead list of rules when it becomes a law to keep. If we have a long list of rules - Put others first! Be generous! Give money! Believe this! Do that! - it's a dead religion from a glorified rule book. — Sarah Bessey

A guy isn't the only thing that will make me happy. If I never find romance or love, that will be okay. It's what I want, but it doesn't define me. — Kim Kardashian

Everyday I receive a lesson that teaches me that I can't let what others think of me define me. — Trisha R. Thomas

For some reason, people find me funny. It's quite hard to define why a thought is funny. It's even harder to define why a person would be funny. It's a word that I can't define at all. But whether I know quite what it is or not, I seem to be it. — Wallace Shawn

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally. — Jennifer Egan

No one - not a conservative or liberal or whatever - can stand back and 'define' what marriage means. Other people's marriages have nothing to do with mine; whether my neighbors are divorced or gay or widowed will not lead me to change anything about how my wife and I deal with each other or how we raise our children. — Kurt Eichenwald

Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.' — Herbie Hancock

How much of my body is really me? My face is me, for sure. Anyone who looked at my face would know it was me. ( ... ) But after that? If I showed myself a picture of myself from the shoulders down, would I be sure it was me? ( ... ) I close my eyes and ask myself what my feet look like. I only kind of know. ( ... )
I let it define me, but I can't even define it. — David Levithan

A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly. — Stan Laurel

I don't want the world to define God for me. I want the Holy Spirit to reveal God to me. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

Poets to Come
POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse
for you must justify me
you must answer.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you. — Walt Whitman

Even though people are shallow and lots of people prefer scripted fictional heroes to real human beings, they can still be shaken out of it in the presence of someone who is REAL. Your problem is not that you haven't mastered the conversational skills necessary to maintain someone's interest. Your problem is that you've never forced yourself to define exactly who you are and what you love and how you want to live. You've never had to talk about these things passionately. You've never dared to lay yourself bare, without apology. Once you can look someone in the eyes and say, "Here's what really matters to me"? That's what people find attractive, trust me. They want to be with someone who knows himself and gives a shit. That's what's alluring and attractive and irreplaceable, even in this age of smooth make-believe. — Heather Havrilesky

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

My life is up to me to define. I needed to make my own dreams come true. — Kaira Rouda

Being autistic is not everything about me. Try not to define me by my diagnosis. — Tina J. Richardson

Flint surprises me by laughing out loud, covering his mouth for a moment as though trying to hide it. "Oh my God - Relax. I'm still coherent, right?"

"Define coherent and I'll let you be," I mumble at him, annoyed.

Flint smirks. "You're cute when you fuss over me." I have to wonder if this is friend appropriate behavior.

"I am not cute." I say; feeling heat spread over my cheeks and looking away from him. "And I'm merely concerned for your safety." I trail off when I hear the noise of someone moving around above our heads.

Flint chuckles and says, "I think you're cute. — Melissa Simmons

I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn't give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.

"I must go now," I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. "Thank you for the book."

He drew me into his embrace and sighed. "Thank you for the stars. — Elizabeth Langston

When people say 'marriage' to me ... It's always a means to an end. Everyone's so in a rush to define the relationship. — Lady Gaga

Every day I strive to get to a place where I'm not effected by the external world, and I don't use the external world to define or tell me who I am. I strive for a state of equanimity and calm and a state of grace, so I can be free of definitions. If you are free, then you can create beautiful things. It's really just shutting out the noise. — Laurel Holloman

Young men keep telling me they don't 'have it all' either. And they may have a point. But if you define 'having it all' as the opportunity to have a successful career and a family, I'd say this. When a man tells his coworkers he's going to have a child, no one asks him how he'll manage or if he'll be coming back to work. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

Because: if our secrets define us, as opposed to the face we show the world: then the painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am. And it's there: in my notebooks, every page, even though it's not. — Donna Tartt

You remind me
Define me
Incline me.
If you died
I'd. — Lemn Sissay

Your fears are not you. Do you hear me? They don't define who you are. — S.L. Jennings

Some would define a servant like this: 'A servant is one who finds out what his master wants him to do, and then he does it.' The human concept of a servant is that a servant goes to the master and says, 'Master, what do you want me to do?' The master tells him, and the servant goes off BY HIMSELF and does it. That is not the biblical concept of a servant of God. Being a servant of God is different from being a servant of a human master. A servant of a human master works FOR his master. God, however, works THROUGH His servants. — Henry T. Blackaby

Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial - it's been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable. — Halsey

For years I said Let me in, Love me, Approve me, Define me, Regulate me, Validate me, Support me. Now I say Move over. — Joanna Russ

C. So, hunny, don't waste your time trying to label or define me ... 'cause I'm not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I'm all of that and then some. And whereas I can't live inside yesterday's pain, I can't live without it. — George C. Wolfe

I am not apologetic. I don't define or defend my philosophical thoughts. You have to feel them, think about them, imagine them, and then try to understand them. My thoughts are my truths. They may not be your truth, and that is fine with me. — Debasish Mridha

Now that I have a daughter, I've been thinking about how I'll define beauty to her. I watched a video of Kendall when she was three, and she was putting on makeup. I don't know how I feel about that. But my daughter already watches me do it. When do you let them start wearing it? I don't know yet. — Kourtney Kardashian

Casting back her head, Arya gazed up at the twinkling sky, her long neck gold with firelight, her face pale with the radiance of the heavenx. "Do you ask out of friendly concern or your own self-interest?" She gave an abrupt, choked laugh, the sound of water falling over cold rocks. "Never mind. The night air has addled me. It has undone my sense of courtesy and left me free to say the most spiteful things that occur to me."
"No matter."
"It does matter, because I regret it, and I shall not tolerate it. Did I love Faolin? How would you define love? For over twenty years, we traveled together, the only immortals to walk among the short-lived races. We were companions ... and friends. — Christopher Paolini

Let me define a garden as the meeting of raw nature and the human imagination in which both seek the fulfillment of their beauty. Every sign indicates that nature wants us and wishes for collaboration with us, just as we long for nature to be fulfilled in us. If our original state was to live in a garden, as Adam and Eve did, then a garden signals our absolute origins as well as our condition of eternity, while life outside the garden is time and temporality. — Thomas Moore

To bring myself back to a perspective of all that I am in Christ - not according to the world. I need it to remind myself that the world doesn't define me. I am defined by my relationship with Jesus Christ. — Tony Dungy

Living as Wild Child, I could no longer be Debby Parker comfortably - this name that I'd been given at birth that defined me before I'd had the chance to define myself. — Aspen Matis

People who taught me that no accident of birth--not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless--would ever define or limit me. In other words, they helped me to discover what it means to be free...My only wish--and I know Wes feels the same--is that the boys (and girls) who come after us will know this freedom. It's up to us, all of us, to make a way for them. — Wes Moore

I don't really care if people think I'm good-looking or not; it doesn't define me as a person. — Genesis Rodriguez

I never took the fame too seriously. It was a great period in my life, but it doesn't define me. When I think back on the time, I look at it with a wink. I focus on the good moments I had, not that I was on a lot of magazine covers. — Jonathan Taylor Thomas

I had an amazing childhood and always loved to sing and dance, but there were moments where I had ups and downs with my health that often tested me as it does many people. I've never hidden the fact that my health was sometimes not on my side, but I've never let it define me or deter me from my dreams. — Jessie J.

I finally realized that I had to embrace the madness, let it transform me instead of letting it define me.

....

"You, my ferocious girl, are embracing the madness. Lean into it, won't ya? — R.L. Haas

One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself ... and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position. — Wilma Mankiller

I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth. — Sonia Sotomayor

You should have seen the costumes for the last few prom themes: Pimps and their srteet ho's; CEOs and their office ho's; GI Joes and their combat ho's; Gardeners and their garden hose;Firemen and their fire hose ... If you ask me, a 'masquerade' theme isn't flattering for anyones features, nor does it define the apppropriate gender roles very clearly. — The Harvard Lampoon

My mother taught me something at a young age - she said 'you are the company you keep'. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources - that's pretty shallow. — Howard Schultz

I found myself surrounded by people
starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and leading to a string of wonderful role models and mentors
who kept pushing me to see more than what was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself. People who taught me that no accident of birth
not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless
would ever define or limit me. — Wes Moore

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to limit you. — Taylor Swift

I want to stress, this is the experience-growing up in a working-class family-that defined me and continues to define me. It's the core of my being. And it explains, incidentally, a good deal about my love of America. — Geoff Dyer