Quotes & Sayings About Finding Oneself

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing. — Lewis Hyde

Reach deep within, and reconnect with the essence of your being. — Bryant McGill

Westerners often define spirituality as denying oneself, being detached from earthly concerns, and being intent on otherworldly values. By contrast, the Hebrews experienced the world of spirit as robust, life-affirming, and this-worldly in character. Such was the "spiritual" orientation of the Hebrews. So-called spirituality did not come by negating the richness of life's experiences or withdrawing from the world. Instead, they affirmed creation by finding a sense of holiness in the here and now. There was no division between the sacred and secular areas of life. It was all God's world, and it was to be enjoyed without a sense of shame or guilt. In Paul's words, "to the pure, all things are pure" (Tit. 1:15). As trustees and stewards of God's world, human beings were to live within it and use it in accord with divine directives. — Marvin R. Wilson

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence. — Simone De Beauvoir

To find one's purpose is to discover one's worth, discern one's direction, wholly dedicate oneself to the journey, and forge an unbending determination that I will not leave the world the way I found it. This week's blog outlines the finding of our purpose. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

An Indigo Bunting let out a trill, a cheery song, reminding me of better days, of hope and happiness and all the lofty promises a blue canary can sing about. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the heady morning air. Looking within myself, I searched for the man I once was. — Cheryl R Cowtan

What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web ... — David Abram

Finding the calmness or serenity in oneself effectively diffuses the judgments of others — Gary Hopkins

It was like finding oneself under the scrutiny of a stuffed bird. His — John Connolly

The feeling of losing oneself in somebody's arms, yet at the same time finding oneself there, is irreplaceable. Nothing compares to the intensity of that feeling. — Katarina Witt

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. — Marcus Aurelius

How everyone is struggling for something. Trying to keep the balance.

Struggling to find their way back. Doing the best they can with what they've been dealt. Staying in place, doing anything to keep from sinking. To keep from rising.

Until something changes. Like a day at school, a friend for lunch, someone standing up for you.

And the choice to feel. Standing before you.

Realizing what part is yours. What you can and can't do. Who you are. Who you are meant to be.

More than the sum of all your broken parts. — Ash Parsons

We must become reacquainted with our true human selves. — Bryant McGill

As love leads the way, the steps will be made easy. — David Scott

Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life's critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. No. One may simply default. Pass. Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one's heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly? — Walker Percy

Today words curve around my vision,
Stumbling from my parched core
To soak again those strands of silence. — Phen Weston

Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made. — Jacques Barzun

Those who seek eternity find a mind of infinity — Ana Claudia Antunes

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me. — Miranda Lambert

We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong. — Carson McCullers

The female view that one strengthens oneself by strengthening others is finding greater acceptance, and female values of inclusion and connection are emerging as valuable leadership qualities. — Sally Helgesen

Fashion in the past meant conforming and losing oneself. Fashion in the present means being individual and finding oneself. — Gloria Steinem

I used to play a game where I imagined that someone had abandoned me in a strange place & I had to find my way back home-I thought I could do it blind, the same way a lost dog might trek a thousand miles to return to its owner, relying on some mysterious instinct that drew the heart back to where it belonged. — Laura McHugh

While a significant part of learning certain comes from teaching - but good teaching and by good teachers - a major measure comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself. — Nicholas Negroponte

Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth. — Criss Jami

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky. — Alice Hoffman

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. — Ann Patchett

I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone."
"What do you fear then?" he asked her.
She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words.
"Never finding myself again ... — Mary Balogh

It was the critic Alexander who put me on my guard against unnecessary fault-finding. People should not be sharply corrected for bad grammar, provincialisms, or mispronunciation; it is better to suggest the proper expression by tactfully introducing it oneself in, say, one's reply to a question or one's acquiescence in their sentiments, or into a friendly discussion of the topic itself (not of the diction), or by some other suitable form of reminder. — Anonymous

Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings; this is the method of Tao. — Laozi

You must find yourself before you can know where you belong, yet to find yourself first you must know who you are. However, you will never really know who you are if you are always allowing other people to define who you should be, so be yourself and if you are still unsure of who you are then reinvent yourself. — Andrew James Pritchard

A change of perspective may be all it takes to transform a painful experience into a powerful growth experience. — Iyanla Vanzant

Without a map of our natural and social world - a picture of the world and of one's place in it that is structured and has inner cohesion - human beings would be confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently, for there would be no way of orienting oneself, of finding a fixed point that permits one to organize all the impressions that impinge upon each individual. [ ... ] Even if the map is wrong, it fulfills its psychological function. But the map has never been entirely wrong - nor has it ever been entirely right. It has always been enough of an approximation to the explanation of phenomena to serve the purpose of living. — Erich Fromm

When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want, — E.W. Jackson

Everyone eventually winds up writing about themselves - the problem is finding the best way to go about it. To write about oneself literally, in the first person, presumes a more interesting personal life and philosophy than most rock lyricists possess. John Lennon was good for one great album based on musical direct address, 'Plastic Ono Band. — Jon Landau

It is easy to love and sing one's love. That is something I am extremely good at doing. Indeed, that is my art. But to be loved, that is true greatness. Being loved, letting oneself be loved, entering the magic and dreadful circle of generosity, receiving gifts, finding the right thank-you's, that is love's real work. — Helene Cixous

In search of myself, I have created myself. — Ljupka Cvetanova

You can't help people being right for the wrong reasons ... This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence. — Arthur Koestler

For the first time in his life, he stopped worrying about results, and as a consequence the terms "success" and "failure" had suddenly lost their meaning for him. The true purpose of art was not to create beautiful objects, he discovered. It was a method of understanding, a way of penetrating the world and finding one's place in it, and whatever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by-product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things. — Paul Auster

Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself. — Harriet Lerner

He who does not really feel himself lost, is lost without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Everything and everyone has a place to be, Echo. It's just a matter of how they get there and when. You have a place; you just have to find it. — Nadege Richards

Me personally, I'm a guy who it took a long time to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. I relate to a lot of that finding oneself a little later in the game, or being thrown a curve later in the game. — Kurt Sutter

Everyone has it in them to express themselves that fundamental thing that they know they are inside. That rather beautiful afraid person. Which might get translated into aggression, or silence, or shyness, or all kinds of other things. But inside we know that we are huggable and lovable, and we want to love and be loved. That person is yearning for fulfillment. To be the person they know they can be and that's a constant journey; that's a process. It's not acquiring about this thing and then that thing, getting to this place, learning this technique, and finding out how this works. It's about the fact that other people are always more interesting than oneself. Let's forget what successful people have in common, if there's a thing unsuccessful people have in common it's that they talk about themselves all the time. — Stephen Fry

It is better to know oneself than know to others. So not find fault others see first in yourself. When one experiences truth, the madness of finding fault with others disappears. — Suman Jyoty Bhante

Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself ... and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation. — Donald Woods Winnicott

We all make mistakes. We must keep finding the right paths. — Lailah Gifty Akita

To be away from home and yet find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world. — Charles Baudelaire

If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him. — Criss Jami

It is, finally, a word is untimely in three different senses, and bearing it as one's treasure will not win one anyone's favours; one rather risks finding oneself outside everyone's camp ... Beauty is the word that shall be our first. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Too much time is wasted fighting one self and life itself. Peace and fulfilment emerge the moment you embrace both. — Rasheed Ogunlaru

I saw a dead bird flying through a broken sky. I heard it, and it said, The world will never understand. — Nadege Richards

Unquestioning automatons
blindly marching to the beat -
an eerie crunching sound
hoards of shuffling feet ...
(from silent moments) — Muse

It is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Learning to explain phenomena such that one continues to be fascinated by the failure of one's explanations creates a continuing cycle of thinking, that is the crux of intelligence. It isn't that one person knows more than another, then. In as sense, it is important to know less than the next person, or at least to be certain of less, thus enabling more curiosity and less explaining away because one has again encountered a well-known phenomenon. The less you know the more you can find out about, and finding out for oneself is what intelligence is all about. — Roger Schank

I have rubbed, knocked and brushed up against a thousand windows, trying to get an image. — Anthony Liccione

If the key to life is figuring yourself out; family must be the lock. — LDarnell

Belief in oneself is a crucial quality of leadership, because 'a house divided against itself cannot stand.' A leader who fluctuates back and forth sends a very wavery signal. Like the soprano who can shatter glass by finding that high note and holding it, a leader who can hold that high note, without wavering, can shatter walls. — Laurie Beth Jones

Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth. — Vladimir Nabokov

But there is a difference between enjoying someone's company, thinking them attractive, and finding oneself helplessly in love. — Kate Morton

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all. — Rollo May

Sometimes it's only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure - symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other. — Alexandra Katehakis

Finding oneself and one's path is like waking up on a foggy day. Be patient, and presently the fog will clear and that which has always been there can be seen. The path is already there to follow — Rasheed Ogunlaru