Self Define Quotes & Sayings

However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation
to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our co-workers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships. — Derrick A. Bell

Love is you. Love is calling you. Life is awaiting you. Go forth and live fully. Be whomever you are. Define you. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

I don't believe in demons and pitchforks. But I think, if you had to define hell, you could take a good man and deny him the rites he believed in, and condemn his soul to a slow process of corruption until it was nothing but a mass of rage and hate and seething evil that his true self would have loathed. I think that would be hell. — K.J. Charles

If we lack either self-awareness or confidence in who we are, we run the risk of allowing others to define who we are or who we should be. — Lisa Locke

At any given point you can release your greatest self. Don't let anyone hold you back. Don't let anyone dilute you. Don't be peer pressured into being less than you are. People willing to dilute themselves for the sake of others is one of the great tragedies of our time. Stop letting others define and set the pace for your life. Get out there and be your best. Do your best. Live your best. Make every day count and you'll see how exponentially more exciting, thrilling, successful, happy and full your life will be. — Steve Maraboli

The world needs people who have survived mistakes, tragedies, and trials to help the rest of us through. Where would we be if Victor Frankl had never experienced what he did during the war? He wouldn't have used his experiences to benefit millions of people around the world.
The world needs you to let go of self-pity and shame regarding your life experiences, too. The world needs you to use the things you have learned for good. Stop letting your past mistakes define you and affect your value. Let go of separation and victimhood and find meaning in what you have been through. — Kimberly Giles

Make life easier for those around you, not harder.
Every person you know is fighting their own great battle. Few of us ever know what those battles entail, and so often we say and do things that push others deeper and harder into the front lines of those battles. I know such has been the relentless lifelong reality for me.
Love a person for the person that they are.
Or dislike them for the person that they are.
But don't love or dislike them for the sole reason that they see people differently than you do. Don't love or dislike them because they experience the world differently than you do.
And please don't eternally and wholly define them with sexual labels just because they were among those who finally found the courage to acknowledge their truth. — Dan Pearce

Further strengthenings of the self-centered instinct for survival recruit even greater numbers of people into some sort of ring of fellowship (church or gender, red state or blue) by populating the terra incognita outside the ring with enough barbarians to verify the existence of a civilization within
to define the preferred stock by what, as all good people agree, it decidedly is not. — Lewis H. Lapham

I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources. — Jorge Luis Borges

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

No matter what life has dealt you, your yesterday does not need to define your today. — Mary A. Perez

The question of what we are can only be answered by ourselves. We each decide what we are by the life choices we make. How we were made, who are parents are, where we are from, the color of our skin, who we choose to love, all those things do not define us. Our actions define us, and will keep defining us until even after death. — P.C. Cast

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you're satisfied one moment - saying yes, it's a good meal, makes me happy - well, that's not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven't really experienced ups and downs yet. I'm not exactly sure what happiness even means. I don't know if I personally could define it. — Bob Dylan

Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a characteristically modern prejudice of professional philosophers. For most Greek and Roman thinkers from Plato to Augustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical philosophers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the ability to define terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive component of a school's teaching), but rather to explore 'the kind of person, the sort of self' that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. — James Miller

We watch a character define himself entirely through what he will not claim. If I could choose one item from my entire apartment, what would I disown? It might be my trash can full of ripped paper packets, which might mean that this pile of packets is my most honest expression of self. — Leslie Jamison

John Hodgson can describe Richard Dawkins's atheism as vacuous only because 'atheist' is a term which non-believers use purely as a polemical convenience when we have to define concisely what we don't believe [ ... ]. No atheist is principally that. What we'd want to call ourselves is humanist or materialist, or biologist or linguist, or for that matter socialist, because one or more of these, or something else again, is what we do and think and are. We have 'purely and simply finished with God', to adapt a phrase of Engels's. — David Craig

as their eyes met she got that feeling again, that sensation of there being something huge between them, something she couldn't quite define, something her twenty-year-old self might have called 'passion' and her thirty-year-old self might have more cynically called 'chemistry'. — Liane Moriarty

A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force - the power of wisdom and love in action - is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism. — Andrew Harvey

A relationship doesn't define you. You define you. — Tammy-Louise Wilkins

Nostalgia for people, cultures, everything. There's an ability to use these marks to note things that are erased, deleted. Traces are a species of history, of evidence. It's a way for the way the narrator to construct a semblance of self, even though all of this creates a deception, a way to think of one's traces as a real way to define oneself. The trace is fallible, impermanent. It's one of the motives I had in mind throughout the text. — Sergio Chejfec

Once upon a time black male "cool" was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a "poor me" victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others. — Bell Hooks

We place such crazy importance on physical appearance in our image-obsessed culture, on youth and beauty to define our sense of self-worth, that aging, by default, becomes a kind of defect, something secret and corrosive and shameful. — Ruth Ozeki

It would be wise to define 'living' as walking in the fullest expression of who I am, verses wallowing in the confines of who I'm not. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Lineage, personality, and environment may shape you, but they do not define your full potential. — Mollie Marti

If you're the greatest, it's okay to say you're the greatest. My suggestion to everybody is to be their own greatest fan. Weaker personas and personalities define that as egotistical or arrogant, but what it means is their self-esteem isn't that strong. — Gene Simmons

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to define victory. You can't document the war's progress on a world map or chart it on a historical timetable in a way that makes any sense. A country used to a feeling of being in command and control has been whipsawed into a state of perpetual reaction, swinging wildly between passive fear and fevered, often thoughtless, activity, at a high cost to its self-confidence. — George Packer

Being true to ourselves is about having courage to define our own version of what it is to live a successful life. — Henna Inam

She swallowed it down and willed her heart to settle. This was an important moment. For the first time she could introduce herself how she wanted. She got to define her own self. And no one was going to stop her. "Ella," she said quietly, as if saying out loud what had been only in her head for so long would break it further. — S.T. Lynn

When you discover who God is, you discover who you are. And when you discover who you are, you no longer have to struggle with the insecurity and self-promotion that define much of society. You no longer have to strain to measure up, to qualify. You are free to be yourself. — Steven Furtick

If there is a mystical chord in democracy, it probably revolves around the notion that unexpected music can resonate from politics when people are pursuing questions larger than self ... I have seen that ennobling effect in people many, many times- expressed by those who found themselves engaged in genuine acts of democratic expression, who claimed their right to define the larger destiny of their community, their nations. — William Greider

There is, I believe, no such thing as unconditional self-acceptance. Those who say so are promulgating a pernicious lie. One must first live a decent, honorable and productive life. Only then do you get to feel good about yourself.
Seeking to heedlessly gratify your desires or impulses of the moment to do things (or fail to do things) your conscience knows to be contrary to your standards of right, worthy and virtuous behavior is, in a mental, emotional and spiritual sense, akin to spending capital that you have not earned, and therefore will eventually cause you to feel very negatively ... about who and what you are. You cannot in the long run have your cake and eat it too. The longer ... you behave in certain ways, the more it comes to define you, not only to others, but also to yourself. — Laura C. Schlessinger

Science has proven that subatomic particles can exist in two places at once. Since we are all made up of these particles, then this simple fact should drastically re-define every limitation that you think you have. — Gary Hopkins

When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God's image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine - however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation. — Nancy Pearcey

No wonder the word 'feminism' was feared. It had been much too narrowly defined. I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women's power must come through men. — Erica Jong

I think the Buddha presents an image of someone who believes in self-control. I think he's offering, perhaps, a critique of the romantic idea of the passions being this wonderful source of life or vitality that define you or your writing. — Pankaj Mishra

Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. (151) — Stewart Burns

I define success as being the best, authentic me that I can be. — Leeky Behrman

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. — Albert Camus

Socrates refused to neatly define the self he had in mind, just as Buddha refused to use a word like "God." Their reasons were the same: it defeats the truth to use words, since words imply that you know what you are looking for. Instead, truth is an experience. It cannot be anticipated, any more than one can anticipate, at age five, what it will be like to go to college, get married, have children. Experience is fresh and new (or should be); thus truth is fresh and new. From there, it's a small step to demanding that God be fresh and new. — Deepak Chopra

Make a promise to yourself right now, that you will choose your thoughts and words wisely, that you will no longer use disempowered language about yourself, and nor will you ever negatively define yourself by what has occurred in your past. — Miya Yamanouchi

At this point in history, our society tends to elevate and reward the specialist ... This concentrated focus has brought some benefits ... It may also be a modern malady. Specialization, when taken too far and allowed to define who and what we are, becomes limiting. It robs us of our wholeness and our self-sufficiency. It misses the big picture and confines us to a narrow zoom. And it leaves us at the mercy of experts. — Keith Stewart

The good oxymoron, to define it by a self-illustration, must be a planned inadvertency. — Wilson Follett

Do not blindly accept anyone's definition of your life and define it yourself. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

How will I know who I can become if I don't give myself the chance to try new things, to push myself beyond my normal boundaries? Who might I be if I am away from the things that I currently use to define myself? — Eileen Cook

I would define morality as enlightened self-interest ... That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just isn't where we are. — Andrew Young

Define who you are. Define your future. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It is important to realize that we so often define ourselves by what is in opposition to ourselves. — Chris Matakas

When you define yourself based on things you have done, in order to maintain that self-image you must constantly look away from the present moment, as you search for a means of self-understanding through past experiences. — Chris Matakas

With that said, don't be trifling about being a feminist. It really infuriates me when high-profile people in your position self-identity as feminists just because it's trendy at the moment and then don't do any of the, you know, actual work of trying to make things equal for everybody. You're going to have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty in order to create a society that takes women as seriously as the men. The type that encourages us to not define ourselves by who we go to bed with at night, but by who and what we see reflected back at us in the mirror in the morning. The type that recognizes that women are not a monolith and that they have wildly different experiences informed by their race and/or sexuality. Be that beacon of light that we can look toward. Be the feminist who will help normalize the idea of Feminism for society. Be the feminist everyone needs. No presh. 3C. — Phoebe Robinson

When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.
Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?
If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are. — Lance Armstrong

Healing is about wholeness and harmony. I define healing as anything that contributes to you feeling greater balance, harmony, wholeness, and well-being. In other words, you experience healing when you feel good; and healing is what you need any time you feel that you are out of balance - be it tired, stressed, fearful, or worried - or when you sense a disconnection between your mind, body, and spirit. — Susan Barbara Apollon

Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn't matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not relative somebody else's standard. — Leonard Sax

Putting on a beautifully designed suit elevates my spirit, extols my sense of self, and helps define me as a man to whom details matter. — Gay Talese

Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock. How could he be sitting there in stately judgment, being addressed as "Your Honor" or "Mi Lud," without those poor bastards being dragged before him day after day? It does not undermine his work and his function to recognize this. — Alan W. Watts

Self-preservation is to hunker down in the suffocating confines of this infinitesimally tiny existence that I define as 'me,' instead of letting 'me' run through the infinitely massive expanse of everything that is not me. And if the beast of self-preservation does not permit such freedoms, I will preserve myself to my own death. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic 'taken for granted' fashion an organization's view of its self and its environment. — Edgar Schein

Ultimately one must abandon the path to enlightenment. If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out - these become to us the self that is most real. — Tara Brach

I like to think of the word love as a door. If you only look at the door, all you get is an idea about what love is; but if you are willing to move closer to the door, to open it, and to walk on through, you get to have an experience of what love is. To be intimate with love, you have to move beyond words, leave behind self-concepts, empty your mind of learned ideas, stop being so religious, and let yourself dissolve into love. Now we are really getting somewhere. Now, at last, we can stop trying to define love, and we can let — Robert Holden

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

Often our self-esteem is tied to our work. In our culture, men and women often define themselves by the jobs they hold ... But a person's job tells you nothing about a person's character or value. — Billy Graham

Every soul is a soul. It is the motives, deeds and actions that define the personality of each soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others - our parents, for instance - and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. — Charles Taylor

I'm no expert, no natural-born talent, definitely no guru. As you'll soon learn, only through a colossal experiment in trial and error did I reach the sexual summit. Although I own up to having worn a cape in a few intimate scenarios, I don't possess supernatural powers of any kind. Perhaps my IQ is slightly above average, but Mensa isn't busting down my door. If pressed to define myself, I'd say I'm Horatio Alger between the sheets: a self-made swinging single male. . . with a hefty dose of Buster Keaton mixed in. — Daniel Stern

Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. — Michael A. Singer

If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. I define evil, then, as the exercise of — M. Scott Peck

What is your intention as you begin dating? Are you hoping to enter into another serious relationship right away? Exclusive or Open? Companion? Friend with benefits? You define this. Don't let someone else define this for you. — Staci Bartley

I would define love very simply: as a potent blend of openness and warmth, which allows us to make real contact, to take delight in and appreciate, and to be at one with
our selves, others, and life itself. Openness
the heart's pure, unconditional yes
is love's essence. And warmth is love's basic expression, arising as a natural extension of this yes
the desire to reach out and touch, connect with, and nourish what we love. — John Welwood

Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating, it is irrational. Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do. Your life is a complex and ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions. To put it another way, you are more like a river than a statue. Stop trying to define yourself with negative labels - they — David D. Burns

What you do doesn't define you. You can't let your failures, or your success for that matter, dictate how you view yourself. You are loved. — Taylor York

As long as people tend to define themselves at least partially in terms of the work they do, any change to that work, its procedures and modes, is likely to have self-definitional importance to them. This can lead to surprising amounts of change resistance. — Tom DeMarco

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself. — Harvey Fierstein

Never let others define you. — Auliq Ice

Brands are facing a new competitive landscape in which self-definition, core values and purpose will increasingly define their ability to reach customers that only allow what is meaningful in their lives to pass through their filter. — Simon Mainwaring

I have had the experience common to many women, of needing to define myself and to find my self-esteem as a person, not simply as somebody's wife or mother. — Hazel Hawke

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. — Brennan Manning

When you're comfortable and content with who you are, the voices of others who try and define, control or direct you are not important. — Rachel Robins

I observe first that characteristically the client shows a tendency to move away, hesitantly and fearfully, from a self that he is not. In other words even though there maybe no recognition of what he might be moving toward, he is moving away from something. And of course in so doing he is beginning to define, however negatively, what he is. — Carl R. Rogers

I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself. — Joe

Life is filled with either problems or possibilities. When you look at a problem, but see opportunity instead, you become a powerful source that transforms grief into greatness. Don't be someone who goes through greater lengths to avoid change than you do to obtain what you desire. You must define and embrace the necessary changes that move you forward. Go beyond your discontent for what is, and instead focus on imagining and creating the best of what's possible. — John Geiger

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves. — Mary E. DeMuth

As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pains and problems, we will never be free from them. — Eckhart Tolle

Self-realization is, in fact, the only religion. For it is the true purpose of religion, no matter how people define their beliefs. — Paramahansa Yogananda

So if all what I've said is the definition of insanity then the next thing is how do you define an evil bastard? People can mix evil and insanity up, thinking both to be the one and self same thing ... wrong! Let me tell you about evil, first you smell it, secondly you feel it, thirdly you taste it and finally you need to destroy it. — Stephen Richards

Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others. — Oprah Winfrey

Don't believe it when people tell you that you will never accomplish anything great in life, or that you're ordinary or should just stay the same as everybody else. Don't let them define you, your life or your future. Don't let society or people restrict or blind you with their definitions of what's beautiful and what's not, and what's successful and what's not, follow your heart. — Auliq Ice

This is because I define myself in part by my color. And I know it is the proverbial slippery slope: That there are associations with red hair that I utterly reject and others I wear proudly means nothing to anyone else, since I don't get to choose how the observer sorts those same traits. Grazing through the stereotypes, I am on the delicatessen plan, winding a way over the menu offerings, picking, choosing and rejecting; adhering to some, dismissing others. Having adopted a method of personal vigilance that allows me to be on the lookout for associations that suffuse my color with preferred associations and to reject those I choose not to adopt, I enhance my self-image. But to other people my red hair is more a take-it-or-leave-it experience: Red-haired, to them, I may also be a certain type of person, complete with temperament. — Marion Roach

The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. The ego you seek, that essential "you" which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you've impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your "feeling." — John Galt

In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind — Mike Scheidt

You cannot control anyone but yourself in this life, and that means you ultimately have the choice in whether you would like life's struggles to define you and keep you down, or would you like them to fuel you to be the very best version of you that you can be. — L.K. Elliott

Courage, self-reliance and decisiveness are the main traits that define a man. — Ogwo David Emenike

It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed- but you can get through all that. No happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. — Andrew Solomon

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt,
Like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown. — Ayn Rand

I'm not preparing our kids for a gentle world, full of interesting and stimulating experiences. I'm getting them ready to keep their damn mouths shut while some idiot tells them what to do. I'm preparing them to keep a sense of self when they can't define themselves by their work because the likeliest scenario is that (unlike doctors and lawyers and bankers) they will not want to. I'm getting them ready to scrap and hustle and pursue happiness despite the struggle. I — Linda Tirado

I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, "I must do this." I can't tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon's rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water. — Jim Harrison

We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us. — Virginia Satir

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc. — Thomas Szasz

You can almost define a convict as one who lacks precisely the kind of wisdom and self-control necessary to derive long-term advantage from short-term discomfort. — Stephen Fry

THE FIRST STEP in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective - know definitely what you want. SECOND: construct an event which you believe you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire - an event which implies fulfillment of your desire - something which will have the action of Self predominant. — Neville Goddard

Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. — Orson Scott Card