You Are Not Defined By Quotes & Sayings

Ritual maturity is not defined by how well one applies Biblical principles to "suppress sin". If you are capable of suppressing your sins or managing them, you would have no need for a Redeemer. — John Paul Warren

Let God begin to rewrite your story. Invite him to show you your past through his eyes. Ask him to surface good memories you have forgotten. He would love to do it. There is healing to be had there. There is a replacing of regret with mercy. Though our past has shaped us, we are not our past. Though our failures and sin have had an effect on who we are, we are not defined by our failures or our sin. Though thought patterns and addictions have overwhelmed us, we are not overcome by them and we will never be overcome by them. Jesus has won our victory. Jesus is our victory. — Stasi Eldredge

You are not defined by the clothes on your body, the shoes on your feet, or the money in your pocket. You are defined by the choices you make, the character that you choose to have, and the respect you show yourself and to those around you. — Quinn Loftis

I think you can do something bad, and it doesn't make you a bad person. We are not defined by any one choice. We are the sum of our experiences, and we can make a bad choice and turn around and do better. — Jessica Capshaw

The next time you check the box "S" for single, remember this: singleness is no longer a lack of options but a choice - a choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status and to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out. Whether or not you have someone in the passenger seat, you are still the driver of your own life and can take whatever road you choose. So the next time you hit a speed bump, otherwise known as the age-old question, "Why are you still single?" look 'em in the eye and say, "Because I'm too strong, too smart, and too fabulous to settle. — Mandy Hale

Youre not weak. Your life is not defined by a letter grade, a dress size, your sexuality or anything else. You have every chance at happiness. You were not meant to suffer. You are loved. Never, ever give up. — Chris Colfer

One of the most important lessons the Lord has taught me is that you are not your gift. That is, you are not defined by what you do or create. Jesus is a wonderful example of this. He would not allow the crowd to define Him by His considerable gifts, even though they tried to do so. Jesus always points away from Himself and His gifts and thereby wins praise for the Father. We are not our gifts. We are called to give more. Like Jesus, we are called to give ourselves. That is the real purpose behind our gifts; they are vehicles for giving the self. — Michael Card

You know, the voiceover continues, it would be nice if we were defined, ultimately, by the people and places we loved. Good things. But at the end of the day, there's the reality that we're not. Does the good stuff really have the weight that the weird stuff does? What makes the deeper impact - all the ridges and gathers - on who we are? Do we have a choice? — Kayla Rae Whitaker

In politics as in high school, who you are is to a large extent defined by who you sit with at lunch, and there was no doubt about it, the Earth was sitting at the loser table. It was not, Bob Pope thought, the true destiny of the Earth in our universe to be counted among the diplomatic equivalent of the acne-ridden and the furtively masturbating. — John Scalzi

A beautiful person is not defined by a hair style, a pair of shoes, it's not the logos on the T-shirt, the sport's team on a hat, the designer's name on a hand bag, or even how you smell.

Instead, beauty lies in who you are when no one is watching, the person you are when there's nothing to hide behind. No amount of concealer can cover up a cantankerous heart, but all the make-up in the world can't add a single lumen to the brightness of a beautiful soul. — Justin Young

You are defined by how you live your life, not whom you live it with, and certainly not by what you gave up to be with that person. — Greg Behrendt

I try to encourage people to really love what they do, like when it's about being a part of this business [entertaining], love what you do because it's not going to always be defined by who you are. It's going to be a lot of times your good name walks in the door before you do. — Cedric The Entertainer

In life, purpose is defined by the thing that makes you angry. Martin Luther was angry; Mandela was angry; Mahatma Gandhi was angry; Mother Teresa was angry. If you are not angry, you do not have a ministry yet. — Myles Munroe

You are not defined by your possessions, looks, or popularity. You are made in God's image. — LeCrae

Have you ever taken yourself a bit too seriously, thinking that who you are is actually defined by what you look like, how much talent you have (or don't have), how well known you are (or aren't), or how much money you have (or don't have)? Those are all "garments and labels" you wear during the course of your stay here on this planet, but it's not who you are. At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, you will turn all of that back in just like a car you had on lease. — Dennis Merritt Jones

You aren't alone. Unworthy. Powerless. You are important in God's eyes. You aren't defined by what has happened to you, or even your own wrong choices; these things will not destroy you. You are loved. Needed. And what you have to say is valuable. — Jo Ann Fore

Our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. 80% of life's most defining moments take place by about age 35. 2/3 of lifetime wage growth happens during the first ten years of a career. More than half of Americans are married or are dating or living with their future partner by age 30. Personality can change more during our 20s than at any other decade in life. Female fertility peaks at 28. The brain caps off its last major growth spurt. When it comes to adult development, 30 is not the new 20. Even if you do nothing, not making choices is a choice all the same. Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do. — Meg Jay

Maybe, abnormal is not defined by a list of ettiquette rules you don't follow or even the symptoms listed in the DSM manual. Maybe, it isn't defined by a person's anger or how they react to prolonged emotional, physical, psychological or sexual abuse. Maybe, it isn't in the rituals people do to cope when they are hurt, lost or confused. Maybe, abnormal is found not in how we live or even in how we survive. Maybe, abnormal is something as simple as going against choosing the right. Maybe, madness is in the things we do that goes against the very nature of all that is good and true. Maybe, just maybe, normal is something as simple as not hurting someone for your own gain. — Shannon L. Alder

Like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experience. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me. — Satya Nadella

When barriers are put in front of you, it's God or the universe asking you to remember who you are, and reminding you not to let yourself be defined by things outside of you. — Christine Ebersole

You are defined by who you are, by your choices in life, in all regards, not just in doing movies. — Andy Garcia

Real is...just being you. It's not letting yourself be defined by other people's opinions of you, of who they think you are, or what they expect you to be. It's refusing to let them squash you into the box they've built for you, and just being yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. Because you're never going to matter to everyone, just like everyone's never going to matter to you. So you choose the people whose opinions you care about, and you be real for them. — Kate Lattey

You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past. — Joel Osteen

Who you are should not be defined by your achievements. — Bill Courtney

You are not defined by an Instagram photo, by a like, by a comment. That does not define you. — Selena Gomez

You can't have the space for prosperity and success when you are obsessed with security. It is not possible to obtain unwavering security - physical, emotional, or economic - by having money. Keep in mind that security, like success, can be defined in many ways. If you focus less on how much your financial assets are worth, and more on what a creative and well-balanced individual you can be, security will take on a new meaning. — Ernie J Zelinski

People who profess to have no faith, do not actually have no faith. They simply do not have faith as defined by the rest of the people. Many people who do not have faith as defined by the rest - do have a faith in many other good things - honesty, dedication, inner strength, and so on and so forth. And if you ask him (or her) why do they abide by these beliefs if there be no external force to damn them if they do not abide, they will answer and say, that it is because it is who they are, it is what they believe in, and that to them any other way is abominable. He (or she) does have a faith. It is just not expressed on one of the main paths of expression that most of the population walk on. They are just different in their faith, that is all. Religion should be rightly termed "The love of the beautiful." For anyone who has a true love and devotion to what is beautiful, does have a faith. That is his faith, that is his religion. — C. JoyBell C.

You are defined not by what you have in life but by what you have given in life. — Deepak Burfiwala

You will find it easier to accept contrary views, knowing that you are not defined by anything or anyone external to yourself. — Wayne Dyer

If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why - and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions - did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it? — Christopher Hitchens

You are unfortunately most of the time defined by your success, when your success is not a major part of your personality. — Roland Orzabal

That's the first time I've ever heard the idea of unconditional love outside the context of religion. In theology class, I always hear about God's love, about his loving us even though we're sinners. But the idea that real live parents could be unconditionally loving is completely foreign... How can anyone be loved not for what they do but for who they are? Isn't who you are defined by what you do? — Cara Chow

Washington - having spent a lot of time there, I grew up there and have spent a lot of time there recently - is largely defined by detailed analytical views and policy choices that are not very good. You know, each policy choice has a winner and a loser, right? Somebody's ox is getting gored. — Eric Schmidt

Men are made in God's image, or so I am told. Likewise that we differ from the animals in having reason. Reason, therefore, must plainly be a characteristic of the Almighty, quod erat demonstrandum. Is it reasonable, then, to create men whose very nature - clearly constructed and defined by yourself - is inimical to your own laws and must lead inevitably to destruction? Whatever would be the point of that? Does it not strike you as a most capricious notion - to say nothing of being wasteful? — Diana Gabaldon

We live in a terrible world, "happiness" is defined by how lucky you are in society, let me say this; out of life experiences spanning throughout my 19-20 years of my life, I learned that life is unfair, but ironically, every time I TRY to do something right, it gets spit back in my f###### face. In short, even though it may sound depressing or negative, in life, it is desperately not fair, nothing will be happy or normal and if something happens that you thought shouldn't or cant, it's going to happen anyway, the truth is the truth, and the truth hurts, deal with it, and sometimes nothing will ever get better from there ever again, deal with it. — C.J. Butler

Forgiveness is not a matter of exonerating people who have hurt you. They may not deserve exoneration. Forgiveness means cleansing your soul of the bitterness of 'what might have been,' 'what should have been,' and 'what didn't have to happen.' Someone has defined forgiveness as 'giving up all hope of having had a better past.' What's past is past and there is little to be gained by dwelling on it. There are perhaps no sadder people then the men and women who have a grievance against the world because of something that happened years ago and have let that memory sour their view of life ever since. — Harold S. Kushner

But most important, I see me . . . or rather, the me I've become. Because I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me "weird" and "different," were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me me. And this was the very reason I decided to tell this story . . . to celebrate the strange, to give thanks for the bizarre, and to one day help my daughter understand that the reason her mother appeared mostly naked on Fox News (that's in book two, sorry) is probably the same reason her grandfather occasionally brings his pet donkey into bars: Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing - rather than running screaming from - the utter absurdity of life. And because it's illegal to leave an unattended donkey in your car, even if you do live in Texas. — Anonymous

I am defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. — Ashwin Sanghi

Did you know that in mathematics they determined what was real by what was not imaginary?" Finn's voice was just a soft rumble beneath my fingertips that had found his lips
"What?"
"When mathematicians came up with imaginary numbers, accepted them, defined them, they had to come up with a name for everything that wasn't imaginary. Everything that wasn't an imaginary number from that point on became a 'real' number."
What's an imaginary number?"
"The square root of negative one is an imaginary number."
"Is that all?"
"Any number that was once the square root of a negative number becomes an imaginary number. Square root of -4 becomes 2i, square root of -100 becomes 10i."
"Is infinity an imaginary number?"
"No."
"Is it a real number?"
"No. It isn't a number at all. It's a concept of endlessness, unreachableness.
"I knew it. See? You are just a figment of my imagination. — Amy Harmon

You are not defined by whoever happened to give you your DNA, Son. You're defined by your choices. And the choices you make are yours. All yours. — Ryan Winfield

Love is a soft whisper coming from the beating one's heart. It's gentle rhythm gives you a feeling of ecstasy you cannot readily fathom for it's not easily defined nor there are finite reasons as to why it is felt by someone. — Elizabeth E. Castillo

You are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. — Jenny Lawson

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know - not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that's kind of different from the information you put in your profile. — Mark Zuckerberg

Man as an organism is to the world outside like a whirlpool is to a river: man and world are a single natural process, but we are behaving as if we were invaders and plunderers in a foreign territory. For when the individual is defined and felt as the separate personality or ego, he remains unaware that his actual body is a dancing pattern of energy that simply does not happen by itself. It happens only in concert with myriads of other patterns - called animals, plants, insects, bacteria, minerals, liquids, and gases. The definition of a person and the normal feeling of "I" do not effectively include these relationships. You say, "I came into this world." You didn't; you came out of it, as a branch from a tree. — Alan W. Watts

If you are reading this book and you feel that way too then you are not alone. I understand how you feel. I think that anyone who has suffered from even mild depression understands how it feels. Yet we forget that others understand our suffering. We withdraw, isolate or shut down completely. We lose ourselves in our selves, and in the illness.
It doesn't have to be that way. If we connect with even one other human being who understands, we take one step out of the illness. Life is about connection. There is nothing else. Depression is the opposite; it is an illness defined by alienation. So I offer this book by way of connection. I offer it, too, as a source of hope. I hope that by sharing what I was like, what happened and what I am like now, that it may bring someone else comfort. — Sally Brampton

We were defined by what we did. What we had to do.
I think this is why guys like football, and why they join the army, because as long as you are playing the game or following orders you do not have to figure out who you really are. — Pete Hautman

I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of "coffee shops" as they were defined in New York - cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know. — Edmund White

In a sense, the process of becoming who you are is defined by carving back the possibilities that were already present. You become who you are not because of what grows in your brain, but because of what is removed. — David Eagleman

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. — Walter Mosley

In books, coaching sessions, and networking events aimed at the white-collar unemployed, the seeker soon encounters ideologies that are explicitly hostile to any larger, social understanding of his or her situation. The most blatant of these, in my experience, was the EST-like, victim-blaming ideology represented by Patrick Knowles and the books he recommended to his boot-camp participants. Recall that at the boot camp, the timid suggestion that there might be an outer world defined by the market or ruled by CEOs was immediately rebuked; there was only us, the job seekers. It was we who had to change. In a milder form, the constant injunction to maintain a winning attitude carries the same message: look inward, not outward; the world is entirely what you will it to be. — Barbara Ehrenreich

People save their strong opinions for women. Why don't they look at men? If I have to read another book or see another movie about a woman being courageous, I'll throw up. Where are the books and movies about the men who do this stuff? But no, it's always about the women. They not only have to get through it, they're supposed to stand up, become a symbol, allow their whole lives to become derailed and defined by it. What if you don't want to? People bang on about women having the right to make choices - well, they need to realise women have the right to choose in these matters, too. — Kirsty Eagar

You ... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around ... Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly ... A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image. Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying. I AM love. — Wm. Paul Young

Who you are is not defined by what you do, but it is defined according to who Jesus is to you — Carl Lentz

Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life. — Jenny Lawson

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we're defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. — Brene Brown

When we get our sense of self from only one place, when something goes wrong and the inevitable happens, it can crush you emotionally, spiritually and physically. So it's important not to believe you are defined by one place, one relationship or one thing, and to find ways to keep your sense of self strong. — Kat Cole

The measure of life is not defined by how much you are earning, but how much you are giving back. — Debasish Mridha

Worthiness should not be defined by the whims of magic weapons. Rise, my son, and let the hammer be damned. Rise and remember the hero that you are. — Jason Aaron