Self Identity Life Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

It's Unfair to be fair,
For Life is unfair — Farley Maglaya

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must have sinned greatly, at some juncture long buried in our protozoic past, to deserve such a universe — John Updike

Don't dwell in comparisons; be your own kinda' beautiful — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

And yet does the appetite for new days ever really cease? — John Updike

More often than not- Life moves really fast! It's only for you to pause and breathe! Sadly, none else can do that for you! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A _ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational — Ayn Rand

Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. — Clarice Lispector

Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion. — Fernando Pessoa

Valuing names as they do, Realists are sparing with them. They are likely to be known only as Joe or Bill or Plato. And they don't smile much.
Nominalists have more fun. They are known as Aristotle or Decimus-et-Ultimus Barziza, or as Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montague, or perhaps by one name in childhood and several others in the course of life.
A firm Realist misses out on one of the most satisfying of all human activities
the assumption of secret identities. A man who has lived and never been someone else has never lived.
It is true that occasionally there can be embarrassment in secret identities, but only a Realist will take the whole thing seriously enough to hit you. So have your fun, and avoid Realists. — Alexei Panshin

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. — Ayn Rand

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love. — Peter Kreeft

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. — Pablo Picasso

Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations ... . This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures ... . It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures. — Christian Smith

... inside of a year, almost all of the stuff of which you were made got regularly switched out for other stuff, as you ate and drank and breathed, and yet if you said you had the same identity you did a year ago, no one would think to call you a liar. Being is always becoming; people change and stay the same. What is true for bodies is also true for selves: even the most honest person has many faces, none of which is false. — Dexter Palmer

This is the history of the world with perhaps a stronger dash of hypocrisy than usual to soothe our feelings. — Gregg Jones

The mirror it was and life it spelled,
The road ahead, and the time past stepped,
All gathered in one; one to all paired,
My life is so different from all the world's threads.

My breaths are mine, my woes are too,
If my life were put through you,
You sure would unlikely pursue,
It should be left for me to gather,
I am its sculptor, mine would be the hammer. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The ancient world was settled so sparsely that nature was not yet eclipsed by man. Nature hit you in the eye so plainly and grabbed you so fiercely and so tangibly by the scruff of the neck that perhaps it really was still full of gods. — Boris Pasternak

Any form of measuring yourself by the unkind action of another towards you is like looking into a badly fractured mirror ... and then blaming yourself for the shattered image you see therein. — Guy Finley

One does not ask about one's true identity simply as a matter of course, but only in rather special circumstances. What this means, I believe, is that "who I really am" becomes an issue for me only when my system of values "breaks down," that is, only when I realize that the values according to which I have lived until now are insufficient to inform a life that I can recognize as satisfying. This realization can occur in variety of circumstances: when my beliefs about myself or the world undergo significant change; when I find that two of my values conflict in a fundamental way; or when, as in the present example, the relations among my previous commitments are insufficiently determinate to tell me what to do in the particular situation I face. — Frederick Neuhouser

I have attended weddings, with chipped nail paints.
I have worn same blue denim for days in a row.
I have not followed etiquette sometimes, I was too happy to bother.
I have picked up fights, ugly ones too.
I have been notorious because I stood up for myself.
I have flaws. I am flawed.
But I have come to realize,
It's okay to life a life others don't understand.
My life should be my LIBERATION,
Not anyone's REGULATION. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Edmund Clowney observes that prayer involves an honesty that has no real parallel in human relationships, because every human relation necessarily involves only a part of your personality. We relate differently to our spouse, our business partner, and a chance acquaintance on the street because each of our social roles expresses only a part of our personhood. Even our spouse sees only part of who we are. "In relation to God, however, we are 'naked and pinned down' (Heb 4:13). Our masks are gone, pretense is useless: the relationship is not partial, but total. All that we are stands related to our Maker and Redeemer."245 — Timothy J. Keller

On the surface, we come to understand that who we are is something separate from all other objects in the world. This is the first and primary of illusions we are taught to believe after having been welcomed to the human world. I do not use the word "illusion" in a negative sense, but in a necessary one. Just as the enjoyment of a film or theatrical play may depend upon the ability of the actors to woo the audience into believing the world they are portraying; the enjoyment of life may also be found in our own ability to wield the power of illusion. — Saunsea

You can either follow your dreams or adjust with your society's expectations ... Either way, consequences are uncertain ... the path to glory or the boulevard of mediocrity, both lead to the grave ... Choose what's worthwhile, for the end is the same. — K. Hari Kumar

In our formative years, every person begins creating a self that can keep him or her company through later stages in life. It requires concentrated effort to create self-hood. The task of creating a fully developed human being is an ongoing process, an open-ended assignment. The goal of self-hood is to evade slipping into a state of thoughtlessness, where we fail to take ownership of our thoughts, deeds, and lifestyle. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Life doesn't have to be only anxiety about what's gone wrong, and complaints about the world around you. — Sara Zarr

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else. — K.L. Toth