The Past Does Not Define You 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

Be a complex person. The more ways you define yourself, the less vulnerable you are to setbacks in any area. If you're only a writer, and your book doesn't sell, you're sunk. But if you're a writer and researcher and a teacher and a wife and mother and gardener and volunteer EMT and singer in the choir, it's easier to bounce back from disappointments. The more sources of joy and pleasure in your life, the better. — Anonymous

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 don't like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define. — Ellsworth Kelly

Define the limits of your vision: Having this, you will not be poorer Than a man who rules a dukedom. — Su Shi

Lord Henry: to define is to limit. — Oscar Wilde

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

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things. — Jane Brox

We must not allow the conformity of our society to define us. — Debasish Mridha

May the Venusian arts enrich your life, not define it. — Mystery

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

Everyone has scars. Remember that you are stronger than your broken parts. Don't let them define who you are. — Beth Michele

And if you look at all this academic work in the conferences and so on there's a constant theme that terrorism is extremely hard to define and we therefore have to have a deep thinking about it. And the reason it's hard to define is quite simple. It's hard to find a definition that includes what they do to us but excludes what we do to them. That's quite difficult. So it takes a global war on terrorism. — Noam Chomsky

You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose. — Archibald Marwizi

A cell in our body may recognize that it is part of a greater whole, but it may never be able to define all that is beyond it simply because of its limited perceptive capacity. Likewise, all that makes up the universal consciousness will always lie just outside of our capacity to define it. — Rajeev Kurapati

It helps omit uninteresting details, provides convenient building blocks (such as while and console.log), allows you to define your own building blocks (such as sum and range), and makes those blocks easy to compose. — Marijn Haverbeke

To define [Canada] or its literature seems like putting a finger on Zeno's arrow: no sooner do you think you have done it than it has moved on. — M.G. Vassanji

We cannot define. Nothing has ever been finally figured out, because there is nothing final to figure out — Charles Fort

You were many wonderful things to many people before you met him
don't let this one event define who you are. — Mary Esselman

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking. — George Hillocks Jr.

You are not the product of your circumstances. You are a composite of all the things you believe, and all the places you believe you can go. Your past does not define you. You can step out of your history and create a new day for yourself. Even if the entire culture is saying, 'You can't.' Even if every single possible bad thing that can happen to you does, you can keep going forward. — Oprah Winfrey

The past does not define, you the present does. — Jillian Michaels

Today is the day to cast your worries on God and breathe in new life. Your past does not define who you are today. — Gabriella Marigold Lindsay

BROWSED this far into the magazine, you've likely noticed something unusual about this issue: it has three consecutive covers. Why? Good question. The theme of The Atlantic 's annual Ideas Issue this year is creativity - which is a hard concept to define, let alone to illustrate. We could have gone with an illuminated lightbulb, or photographed Brad Pitt painting at an easel, but those options didn't seem very ... creative. — Anonymous

The things you rebel against are the things that define you — Charles Sheehan-Miles

You must define success as making the complete effort to maximize your ability, skills, and potential in whatever circumstances - good or bad - may exist. — John Wooden

You narrow hope when you define it ... — Barbara Hambly

Time may be defined as " dimension governed by activity." Dimension diminishes with inactivity so does the value of time. — Moutasem Algharati

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

The technology for a clothing printer exists but is not packaged in a form that would be suitable for consumer use. With the future potential of printing technology, an at-home clothing printer is a definite possibility. Our challenge was to define the experience. — Joshua Harris

Sexuality shouldn't define you. It should be part of who you are. — Jessie J.

The only thing that mattered was that the quarter century or so he had remaining would be his life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that: not work, not friendships, not relationships with women. Those were all components of his life, and valuable ones, but they did not define it or control it. That was up to him, and him alone. — Ken Grimwood

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. — Isaac Newton

If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that's success. You define that as success, then that's success. Success is not a general thing. It's a personal thing. It's a personal attribute. — Lupe Fiasco

I have a needle being stuck into my spine, can anyone please define "a little pain"? — Pandora Poikilos

Look at your life. Look at the ways in which you define who you are and what you're capable of achieving. Look at your goals. Look at the pressures applied by the people around you and the culture in which you were raised. Look again. And again. Keep looking until you realize, within your own experience, that you're so much more than who you believe you are. Keep looking until you discover the wondrous heart, the marvelous mind, that is the very basis of your being. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche