Quotes & Sayings About Not Knowing Who You Really Are

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you. — Orson Scott Card

Under the rules of colonialism, everything goes to and comes from the mother country. In 1870, the colony of Turks and Caicos was asked to send a crest to England so that a flag for the colony could be designed. A Turks and Caicos designer drew a crest that included Salt Cay saltworks with salt rakers in the foreground and piles of salt. Back in England, it was the era of Arctic exploration, and, not knowing where the Turks and Caicos was, the English designer assumed the little white domes were igloos. And so he drew doors on each one. And this scene of salt piles with doors remained the official crest of the colony for almost 100 years, until replaced in 1968 by a crest featuring a flamingo. — Mark Kurlansky

Prayer is that which conveys a message to God, who is either known or knowing, more or less by definition. Poetry is that which conveys a message to a stranger. — G.C. Waldrep III

I know that a lot of songwriters write about a break up. It's a really popular topic. I think heartbreak is the number one thing people write about. I could say that's narcissistic somehow because they want everybody to admire how pained they are. But I actually do think there's something beautiful and uplifting about knowing that you're not the only one who is experiencing or has experienced that kind of devastating loss. Everyone's experienced that. — Mirah

Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he'd been sick in Debrecen she'd taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he'd be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the tie when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father's orchard. — Julie Orringer

In order to feed on what it needed, a poet's soul sought that which it'd never find, or in Dad's case (just a guess but I suspected a good one), sabotaged what it had in order to feed that need. There had to be yearning. There had to be melancholy. There had to be pain mixed with pleasure, but the pain had to come stronger than the pleasure, knowing it never would get what it really needed. No — Kristen Ashley

I found that most people don't really want to know the truth. There are plenty of people who want to know the truth on their terms or require that the truth be contained within certain boundaries of comfort. But truth can never be known this way. You have to seek truth from a place of not knowing, and that can be a very threatening place because we think we already know the truth or we are afraid of what the truth might be. — Jim Palmer

I like knowing about everything, and I think that really helps me in my business. — Martha Stewart

Knowledge and personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is also the cure of doubt; and when we get a full and adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man can know himself as he is, and all fullness of his nature, without also knowing God. — Thornton T. Munger

It is then, when we have set our intention to align our will with God's will, feeling, believing, and knowing our loving connection with all that is, that we can open up our intuition to our full potential. — Catherine Carrigan

It's pretty traumatic knowing that your instrument that's your career isn't working, and you've got to have an operation. — Jess Glynne

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either. — Brian Eno

What's the purpose of being single, if all your going to do is play game? What's the purpose of saying your single, when you're still chasing your Ex? What's the purpose of knowing you're single, if you're going to compare the new to your last? What's the purpose of being single, if your not going open up to let a person know you? What's the purpose of saying you're single, if you're going to let someone else decide on who you deal with? So before you say you're single! Ask yourself, are you're really single or someone else's back up plan. And if so, are you happy? — Jerome D. Williams

I have been fortunate to get some really good scripts over the years and I haven't turned down anything that I regretted so far. And my manager who I've been with for over 25 years is very good at knowing what I should and shouldn't do a lot of times. — Billy Bob Thornton

Knowing now what goes into making a successful artist, it's disheartening. — Sia Furler

Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking. — David Whyte

It's been nice knowing you, Clara,
Huh? My brain still a bit shell-shocked.
Say a prayer for me, will you? He gives me a shaky grin.
Because I'm pretty sure my parents are going to kill me — Cynthia Hand

Is it dangerous to want so much to know someone without first knowing yourself? — Christina Lauren

How many leaps did Nijinksy take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world. — Martha Graham

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat ... I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. — Sylvia Plath

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem. — Allen Tate

Knowing His will is more valuable than all the treasures we could ever have, and we must always esteem knowing His will as the true treasure, and therefore make it the primary thing that we seek. — Rick Joyner

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

Darling,
i wish someone would realize im not happy. im alone and in pain because of you leaving me and never coming home. im nothng compared to you but i feel like im everything better than you. im sick of you and your judgement and you knowing exactly nothing about me at all. so tell me why should i i get know who you really are when your the person who need to get to know me? — Jessica Holt

What's it gonna be like, dying? To go to sleep and never, never, never wake up.

Well, a lot of things it's not gonna be like. It's not going to be like being buried alive. It's not going to be like being in the darkness forever.

I tell you what - it's going to be as if you never had existed at all. Not only you, but everything else as well. That just there was never anything, there's no one to regret it - and there's no problem.

Well, think about that for a while - it's kind of a weird feeling when you really think about it, when you really imagine.

[The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are ] — Alan W. Watts

Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty. — Kumi Naidoo

Do you like manga?" she asked after a minute. "Anime?"
"Anime's cool. I'm not really into it, but 1 like Japanese movies,
animated or not."
"Well, I'm into it. I watch the shows, read the books, chat on the boards, and all that. But this girl I know, she's
completely into it. She spends most of her allowance on the books and DVDs. She can recite dialogue from
them." She caught my gaze. "So would you say she belongs here?"
"No. Most kids are that way about something, right? With me, it's
movies. Like knowing who directed a sci-fi movie made before I was born. — Kelley Armstrong

The moment is not over when you have found the right fit in your style. Begin with knowing who you really are and apologize for nothing. There are no mistakes when it comes to personal expression. — Steven Cuoco

Hippolytus: Do you believe in God?
Priest: (Looks at him.)
Hippolytus: I know what I am. And always will be. But you. You sin knowing you'll confess. Then you're forgiven. And then you start all over again.
How do you dare mock a God so powerful? Unless you don't really believe.
Priest: This is your confession, not mine.
Hippolytus: Then why are you on your knees? God certainly is merciful. If I were him I'd despise you. I'd wipe you off the face of the earth for your dishonesty.
Priest: You're not God.
Hippolytus: No. A prince. God on earth. But not God. Fortunate for all concerned. I'd not allow you to sin knowing you'd confess and get away with it.
Priest: Heaven would be empty.
Hippolytus: A kingdom of honest men, honestly sinning. And death for those who try to cover their arse. — Sarah Kane

When you are stuck in a group of people who merely trade turns at talking about themselves instead of actually conversing, it could be a matter of their not really knowing how to converse as opposed to being too small-minded or excessively Facebooked. — Carolyn Hax

His gaze slid down her frame, pissed with her continued charade and frustrated, not knowing how to break through the barriers that had protected her for so long. Maybe he'd never break through. Maybe she'd never really open up or let him close. "Don't judge her with your snobbery and prejudice. That's not who she is. And deep down, it's not who you are either. — Toni Anderson

We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new experience - a new feeling of what it is to be "I." The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing - with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego. — Alan W. Watts

A soulmate is not someone who shares your interests and is attractive to you. A soulmate is someone who is willing to grow with you, who chooses to be with you until the end, and will love you through good and bad. It's not about sunshine and laughter, it's about mundane moments filled with unknowns. Love is so much more than a spark you have, or passions shared, it's working for something deeper and lasting. I think that at the end of all things, we'll see what really matters, and I think the things we produced with love and grace will be what we have to show. So love with purpose, love beyond yourself, and love knowing that what you are growing is beautiful and good. — T.B. LaBerge

Lasting peace is only found through a lifesaving relationship wit Jesus Christ ... knowing Christ means that all the world might be falling apart just outside your front door, maybe just inside it - yet that inner peace, that inner knowing, remains unshaken. — Karen Kingsbury

Old Noel Constant had never known anything about business, and neither had his son - and what little charm the Constants had evaporated the instant they pretended that their successes depended on their knowing their elbows from third base. — Kurt Vonnegut

Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
Though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away. — Laozi

We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become "the paper made of human meat," we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play. — Kim Hyesoon

Knowing ourselves is knowing our worth in the eyes of God. That's why the number one thought we cannot fail to think and believe is that He loves us. Always. No matter what. — Toni Sorenson

He had been the recipient, he now gratefully acknowledged, of a rare and precious gift. In demanding the hand of a woman he neither understood nor was capable of knowing, he had instead received from her the chance to see himself and the opportunity to become a better man. And he had changed. He knew he had. He knew that he was not that man stalking angrily back to his chambers in Rosings Hall. What had happened to him in those intervening months? He was not sure; he could offer no complete explanation, but the man who had opened Rosings's doors, already prepared to write an angry letter, was a stranger, a man who had been walking through his entire life asleep. But now, he had awoken. — Pamela Aidan

You see, you learn from all your bad experiences, so they're really positive. It's all part of the cosmic knowing. — Nina Hagen

Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months. — Victor Hugo

A cop told me, a long time ago, that there's no substitute for knowing what you're doing. Most of us scribblers do not. The ones that're any good are aware of this. The rest write silly stuff. The trouble is this: The readers know it. — George V. Higgins

Knowing the right questions is better than knowing all the right answers Caleb from Pretty Little Liars (TV Show) — Sara Shepard

Grandpa," I asked, "what good's it going to do us, knowing his name?" "It might do a lot of good," Grandpa said. "This trainer says that if you could make friends with that monkey he would probably do anything you wanted him to do." "Make friends with him!" I said. "Grandpa, I don't — Wilson Rawls

It wasn't just the look of Dolly that drew us in. It was the attitude that came with knowing how ridiculous people thought she looked, but never changing a thing because she felt good about herself. To us, she is...invincible. — Julie Murphy

He wonders if it's some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.
"I wouldn't mind suffocating if it was with you," the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.
"There'll be a better time," he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come - at least not for her - but hope is a powerful motivator.
Eventually they settle into a sort of symbiotic breathing rhythm. He breathes in when she breathes out, so their chests don't fight for space.
After a while, there's a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own. — Neal Shusterman

For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world. — Helen Vendler

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. — Ishmael Beah

What is done cannot be undone,
Knowing that, face it but do not run. — Rupansh Gupta

I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. — Barry Eisler

I love horror movies and I love being scared, but I don't like them, if they're not based on a true story. It's like knowing how the sausage is made. — Olivia Munn

Camera's are everywhere, the walls have eyes the sidewalks have eyes. Nothing completely happens without someone knowing about it. — Ricky Star

I tried very hard. But I can't help it. The Fates are cruel. They sent you to me, my brave one, knowing that you would break my heart. — Rick Riordan

Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul. — Rumi

Hile I was happy enough to pray to any god, knowing that they were simply different faces created by men, of one indivisible truth. — Lian Hearn

We are falling back into allegory," said the Captain, interrupting him. "If you mean by all that that the body is the most solid of realities, then say so."
"No, not exactly," Zeno explained. "This body, our kingdom, sometimes seems to me to be made of a fabric as loosely woven and as evanescent as a shadow. I should hardly be more astonished to see my mother again (who is dead) than to come upon you around a corner as I did, your face grown older and its substance recomposed more than once in twenty years' time, with its color altered by the seasons and its form somewhat changed, but your mouth still knowing my name. Think of the grain that has grown and the creatures that have lived and died in order to sustain that Henry who is and is not the one I knew twenty years ago. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It's only our story that keeps us from knowing that we always have everything we need. — Byron Katie