c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous creature, the happily married coupe, adapting himself closely and lightly to the composite personality.A peevish dead woman...it's absurd...ho much less humiliating for them both it would have been if she had taken a lover.
— Bowen Elizabeth
He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous creature, the happily married coupe, adapting himself closely and lightly to the composite personality.A peevish dead woman...it's absurd...how much less humiliating for them both it would have been if she had taken a lover.
— Elizabeth Bowen
In addition to unfinished business, some ghosts haunt so that they will be remembered.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Each night at bedtime, I'd close the bedroom door, climb into bed, and settle in under the covers. Within a minute, the door handle would turn and the door slowly open about a foot. Then a young boy's screams of "Daddy" would follow from the second bedroom - the little boy's room.
— Paul Stefaniak
I love ghosts
—  I prefer ghosts to some people.
Some ghosts tried to be showy. These were the kinds to avoid.
— Lesley Howarth, MapHead: No.2
Twas now the very witching time of night,When churchyards groan, and graves give up their dead,And many a mischievous, enfranchised spriteHad long since burst his bonds of stone or lead,And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight,To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed,Sleeping, perhaps serenely as a porpoise,Nor dreaming of this fiendish Habeas Corpus.
— Thomas Ingoldsby
Charleston is an extraordinary place. There is a deep connection between the residents and nearly three hundred and fifty years of history, and those ties between daily life and the distant past are strengthened by the occasional glimpse beyond the veil.
— James Caskey, Charleston's Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City
At dusk in the Temple Gardens the barrier between past and present turned fluid and ghosts walked. Here and there if Buckler looked closely he caught a glimpse of knights filing toward the ancient round Church, heads bowed in penitence…Buckler didn’t mind the spirits. In fact, he preferred their company to that of the general run of human. For the ghosts reminded him that man’s petty cares, so all consuming in life, would one day become nothing more than fit matter for an amusing story.
— S.K. Rizzolo, The Rose in the Wheel
They're ghosts, surely, and Rabbit absolutely believes in them. There are things in the world, strange machinations of physics and chemistry,queer intersections of biology and theology, that Rabbit hasn't the slightest interest in assuming he'll ever understand or be able to solve. They're simply there to be believed in, and Rabbit is a born believer. He wants to believe. He has always thought of life as pregnant with possibility-- a freak twister or wardrobe the only thing separating him from another world-- so ghosts, spirits, aliens and supreme beings coexist within Rabbit with ease. There's a kind of beauty in accepting the possibility, if not the plausibility, of everything imaginable.
— Kate Racculia, Bellweather Rhapsody
There’s no way to stand up gracefully when your pants are down around your ankles.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
You tell me the dead are coming through a crack in my barn, but I shouldn’t worry?
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
I missed the good old days when phones were sturdy enough to be pounded for emphasis.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
I didn’t know the grim reaper looked like Sid Vicious. – Jen
— Nessie Strange, Living Dead Girl
This was going to be worse than the time I table danced in the diner in high school!
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
I slept badly that night, my vivid dreams populated by ghosts. As much as it revived ailing spirits in day light, the fizzy energy of NY seemed to feed on human frailty at night.
— Pete Townshend, Who I Am
Banks frown when employees torch the home of their principal account holder.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
I knew I would lose my job when I accidentally set fire to my best friend’s house.
— Kathy Bryson
This house has enough nooks and crannies for English muffins.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
It wasn't until I worked in the Perth Hospital kitchen in the 1970s that I began hearing stories about the ghosts that haunted their halls at night.
— Arlene Stafford-Wilson, Lanark County Chronicle
Turns out there’s a reason smoking is not allowed on construction sites.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
You pretty much have to take the job since you hit him with the car.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
Maybe you’re worried that I won’t seduce you?
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
Elvis is the soul of discretion.
— Kathy Bryson
Elvis is in the kitchen and he’s making eggs Benedict!
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
So how exactly was I supposed to wrap my head around the whole thing? I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust this guy. I mean, this was it? Really? My life ends and some creep in a grungy leather jacket takes me away? No, I couldn’t accept that. -Jen
— Nessie Strange, Living Dead Girl
I’ve worked with freshmen that were easier than this.
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
I am not going to ask that old man if his family home is haunted!
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
He thinks you were trapped in a tree in the 1920s. How is that not crazy?
— Kathy Bryson, Restless Spirits
Easily he had turned studying my least favorite subject in history into my now most memorable one. Then there was his want to make our relationship more real than superficial, something very new to me. Though I was one relationship more knowledgeable than he was, it always felt like he knew more than I did of how relationships where built for the long run. Then again, he could have just learned that from watching his parents or maybe the innocence of our relationship just made him want to keep it pure and real. Like digging deep and wanting to get to know me, not just make out sessions every time we were together. Augusto knew more of the real me, the girl who wants to be a history teacher, enjoys her fries with garlic and cheese, and appreciates when a boy doesn’t complain when plans are made with my friends and he isn’t a part of them.
— Christina Marie Morales, Ambience
...his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Edinburgh is a great big black bastard of a city where there are ghosts of all kinds.
— Sara Sheridan, Ma Polinski's Pockets
No, little one, George's ghost won't come back. Human beings don't have souls. No soul, no ghost. Simple.""How can you say that?" protested Mopple. "We don't know whether humans have souls or not.""Every lamb knows that your soul is in your sense of smell. And human beings don't have very good noses." Maude herself had an excellent sense of smell, and often thought about the problem of souls and noses."So you'd only see a very small ghost. Nothing to be afraid of.
— Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
It lingers in this room like the voices that still echo here, some belonging to a man who’d once been alive, and the rest belong to others who’ve never drawn breath.
— J. Christopher Wickham, The Girl in the Rain
Hazel frowned. "Why that one?""You don't see the ghost?" Frank asked."Ghost?" Nico asked.Okay... if Frank was seeing a ghost that the Underworld kids couldn't see, something was definitely wrong.
— Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.
— Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
— Charles Dickens, Bleak House
I dreaded an invasion of ghosts or, less likely, an invasion of the police.
— Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
Though Abdul had been as afraid of ghosts as most Annawadi boys, these reports did not disturb him. Being terrorized by living people seemed to have diminished his fear of the dead.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
I believe ghost story writing is a dying art.
— H. Russell Wakefield
Annabelle was practically standing on my back. It was like wearing an Annabelle backpack.
— Rose Pressey, Forever Charmed
To my surprise, the sensation of query filled my stomach, spreading through to every corner. This was followed by each point of query ending at the same answer. Device Nineteen had responded to the question by coming to the conclusion that oblivion was the end of every 
— J. Cameron McClain, Miss Fitzhue
Hello dead girl," Isola said, ever the hostess."Hello heartbeat girl," said the uninvited guest. "It's like a drum, it's so fucking loud. Turn it down, will you?
— Fairytales for Wilde Girls
The others can’t see me,” said the little ghost.“I know,” I said. “My name’s Gwyneth. What’s yours?”“Dr. White to you,” said Dr. White.“I’m Robert,” said the ghost.“That’s a very nice name,” I said.“Thank you,” said Dr. White. “I’ll return the compliment by saying you have very nice veins.
— Kerstin Gier, Ruby Red
When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort... But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all. OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven't the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they do provide something just as vital. They help keep you sane.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase
I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren't even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn't have much time for people, he loved books.)
— Simon R. Green, The Bride Wore Black Leather
If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he'll eat all the fish you might have caught for yourself.--Advice of Paul Slater, the evil mediator, to Suze
— Meg Cabot, Darkest Hour
There are our ghosts,' Smithers said.It was a word he liked to use, said Brewster. Like most of us Brewster had read a few ghost stories, and to him the word 'ghosts' summoned up the creaking floorboards of a haunted house, shrouded white figures gliding silently through darkness, fluttering robes moving of their own bodiless accord, strangely transparent coaches travelling swiftly down a midnight road, and other such images quite remote from the chanting and drumming of desert folk in gaudy garb, with jingling anklets and necklaces, under a hot fierce sun. But the sounds of the Thar came from some invisible source, and to Smithers they were sounds made by ghosts.("Smithers And The Ghosts Of The Thar")
— Robert Silverberg
He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)
— Jerome K. Jerome, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
I will tell him that I've always thought he was a monster. And that I want to be his bride
— Yangzee Choo
London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others. Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London was .... at the extreme. The darker side of that history, as opposed to the parks, palaces and pearly kings' side that made busloads of Japanese and American tourists gawk and jabber. The hidden history of a city where the lonely, the dispossessed, the homeless, wandered the streets, brushing shoulders with the shadows of those that had come before them. A city in which the poor and the plague-ridden, those long-since hanged for stealing a loaf or murdered for a shilling, jostled for position with those seeking a meal, or a score, or a bed for the night.A city where the dead could stay lost a long time
— Mark Billingham, Scaredy Cat
Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else there - it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)
— Jerome K. Jerome, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.””Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees. Soren narrowed his eyes at him. “The body’s not even cold yet. Eleanor’s been gone one day and you’re already trying to get me into bed again?” ”Again?” Kingsley laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always. Are you surprised?” Soren shrugged. “Not really.
— Tiffany Reisz, The Prince
I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too.
— Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
She had been his talisman, his cure for the insecurities and worries that he knew deep down didn't really matter, but somehow had always managed to get the best of him.
— Erik Tomblin, The Space Between
I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming through the window, and shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze.""And then you saw the ghost?"James laughed. "Dear chap, the branches WERE the ghost. There weren't any trees within a hundred yards of that house. They'd all been cut down years before. I saw the ghost of a tree.
— Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
Do ghosts drink tea?They don't, said Tansey. But this ghost would love to see a cup of tea in front of her. It'd be lovely.
— Roddy Doyle, A Greyhound of a Girl
The morning heat had already soaked through the walls, rising up from the floor like a ghost of summers past.
— Erik Tomblin, Riverside Blues
This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, 'A ghost! - nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.' I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good - we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. ("The Open Door")
— Mrs. Oliphant, The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies
Ah. Well... I attended Juilliard... I'm a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I've seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT... NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY... NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I'm qualified?
— Betelgeuse
And there has been no attempt to investigate it,' I said, 'to see what it really is?''Eh, Cornel,' said the coachman's wife, 'wha would investigate, as ye call it, a thing that nobody believes in? Ye would be the laughing-stock of a' the country-side, as my man says.''But you believe in it,' I said, turning upon her hastily. The woman was taken by surprise. She made a step backward out of my way.'Lord, Cornel, how ye frichten a body! Me! there's awful strange things in this world. An unlearned person doesna ken what to think. But the minister and the gentry they just laugh in your face. Inquire into the thing that is not! Na, na, we just let it be.' ("The Open Door")
— Mrs. Oliphant, The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies
Libraries are full of ghosts, books being the most haunted things of all.
— Maya Panika
Trust me, you see the dead walking around, you learn not to scream, laugh, or piss yourself pretty quickly.
— Stacey Kade, The Ghost and the Goth
This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one.
— J.D. Salinger
Maybe she'd seen too many Japanese horror movies, and maybe it was just a tingle of warning from generations of superstitious ancestors, but suddenly she knew that what Alyssa wanted was not to be saved, but for Shane to join her. In death.
— Rachel Caine, Bitter Blood
No ghosts need 
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
What are ghosts if not the hope that love continues beyond our ordinary senses? If ghosts are a delusion, then let me be deluded.
— Amy Tan
The only really frightening thing about Cinnamon Hill belongs in the realm of the living and serves to remind me that some of them-just a few of them, a tiny minority-are much more dangerous than all the dead put together.
— Johnny Cash, Cash
Sometimes, the only way to exorcise old ghosts is to pack your bags and move in with them.
— Yasmine Galenorn, Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love
One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.
— Holly Thompson, Tomo: Friendship through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories
Or a ghost is a knot in the otherwise smooth flow of time, an electrical storm in a jewelry box, grief perfectly aligned. And sometimes a ghost is a shared thing; sometimes the entire population of a city or country will just happen to look in the mirror at the same time, and from then on there was a city in the sky, as all cities are if we consider that the sky reaches to the ground, and this city, too, thought it was alive, and the candles walked off by themselves.
— Cole Swensen
...most words for ghost are pieces of mica that carefully layeredwill make a window out of fire. It's cold and the faces at the windowdo what faces usually do they open onto a genetic historythat looks up suddenly and it's the eyes everyone says you can't say that's not alive
— Cole Swensen, Gravesend
What we believe spirit visitors to be influences how they affect our lives. What we believe ourselves to be dictates how we react to them.
— S. Kelley Harrell, Real Wyrd : A Modern Shaman's Roots in the Middle World
You don't get the good shots sitting on your ass in the bad weather- Mark Johnson
— Alan Place, Chronicles of Mark Johnson-8 short ghost stories
If the creek predates the city deep in time, then is it right to identify the creek solely with the city? The city has forgotten the creek, as it's forgotten those who walk its side, but the creek didn't need to be known all that long time before the city ever was. Maybe now Hogan's Creek is too steeped in history to claim an independence grounded in prehistory, because the city has too deeply poisoned it for far too long. Then again, there was all that time the creek flowed and had no name. Without a name you belong solely to yourself.
— Tim Gilmore
A familiar pang of dread wrapped its icy hand around my heart." Lorelei Preston-The Wild Hunt
— Ashley Jeffery
The fact that you and I are acquaintances only interested and amused the ghosts further. Gossip bunch, really.
— August Westman, Dance Into the Dark
Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.
— Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity
Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways... Too often, people make the mistake of trying to use their art to capture a ghost, but only end up spreading their haunting to countless other people.
— Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl
I bolted upright in my bed, gasping for air and still feeling his touch on my hand. I could feel him watching me. I could feel him waiting for me.
— Dana Michelle Burnett, Spiritus
The vase was placed upon my desk, and there were orange-blossoms in it—orange-blossoms, in an English winter!
— Sarah Waters, Affinity
You rile this gal and she'll go wildcat on your ass. Patti (Pat) Canella- Dockland murders/Ghosts of your past.
— Alan Place
Do you like a good ghost story?”-Jonah
— Dana Michelle Burnett, Spiritus
The rancid odor mixed with the dust, death, and confusion as they awaited those who could clean up the mess and make death official.
— G.G. Collins
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
— Jalaluddin Rumi
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
— Bob Moawad
If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That's the hardest thing to find.
— E.L. Konigsburg
[B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.
— Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
It was the most amazing feeling in the world. to know that something right happened, and to know that it had happened not through luck or command but simply because it was right.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
You find out who you are by figuring out who and what you're not
— Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
We make such messes in this life, both accidently and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.
— Sarah Dessen
I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
— Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
— Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant; How To Become A Virgin; Resident Alien
We are not taught "love thy neighbor unless their skin is a different color from yours " or "love thy neighbor unless they don't make money as you do" or "love thy neighbor unless they don't share your belies." We are taught "love thy neighbor". No exceptions. We are all in this together - every single one of us. And the only way we are going to survive as a society is through compassion. A Great Community does not mean we all think the same things or do the same things. It simply means we are willing to work together and are willing to love despite our differences.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
I've heard people say that they lose themselves in a kiss. But in that moment, it was the opposite for me. I felt like I found myself. Not how I wished I was, or who I was afraid I was becoming, but who I really was.
— Jon Skovron, Struts & Frets
You don't realize - the great thing about change is how quickly we get used to it. So I'm not complaining. the more things change,the more they don't stay the same. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They might not change everywhere all at once - but there are moments when the impossible becomes the inevitable, and the rest is just a matter of time.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at
—  some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.
I also believe that when people are going through difficult situations in life... it causes them to search a lot more. They search life and search their soul. When you’re searching, you’re suddenly a lot more open to the world around you, to the possibilities, to things you never thought about before. — When you’re happy, you don’t question the world so much. When you’re lost, you question everything. The very reason why it is so essential to human self-discovery
— Cecelia Ahern
If you think you’re good people, and if you are, how would you know? Is it something you always knew? Or was it something you found? Some people are naturally good at it […]. Is it worth trying to be something you’re not? Just because it’s right?
— Jen Wang, Koko Be Good
I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.
— Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
It was so quiet, I could hear my own breathing, loud in my ears. Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don't believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it--and almost all of us have one way or another--this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.
— James     Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular - but one must take it because it is right.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged - and only when you challenge yourself - do you discover what truly matters.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
I just needed to realize that style was like personality - it didn't always have to be consistent
—  it just had to be something you lived with.
What happens this weekend stays between us. We set the rules.
— Jayson James, Summer Escape
Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.
— David Levithan, Wide Awake
In ourselves our safety must be sought. By our own right hand it must be wrought.
— William Wordsworth
single people without children have a "childish sensitivity and are unwilling or unable to compromise or fit in
— Ninni Holmqvist, The Unit
Gratification comes when you help someone else.
— Trenice Carter
A journey of self-discovery is never pointless, Prince Zuko. However dim your path may seem, and however far you may wander from it...the important thing is that you learn from all of your mistakes along the way and never forget for one moment who you are, or what you are struggling to be.
— Dave Roman, The Last Airbender: Prequel - Zuko's Story
One desire, my friends, one: to kill yourself. You must desire this. You must feel that a voyage of discovery is more important than all the little trips which the normal consumer self wants to buy.
— Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man
But what I want to know is, is there a you independent of circumstances? Is there a way-down-deep me who is an actual, real person, the same person if she has money or not, the same if she goes to this school or that school? Or am I only a set of circumstances?-Aza
— John Green, Turtles All the Way Down
This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "I'm a boy!" It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word "girl" didn't quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small -- it pinched me.
— Cat Clarke, The Pants Project
He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.
— Patrick Bryant, Hum A Radiant Sickness
feed ur destiny and not ur history. stop dwelling on your disappoinments but prepare for your Appointments
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Unlocking Closed Doors
You can't find "it" out there
— Akosua Dardaine Edwards, Nyabo (Madam) - Why Are You Here? The Truth about Living in Service, Love, and Personal Power
We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha' a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self....Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again.
— Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Soul
visionaries lives between 2 extremes
— Ikechukwu Joseph, The Complete Leader: Jesus Christ the Accomplished Perfect Total Leader
For a moment, I tried to see myself through the eyes of the girl with the black hair, or even the boy in the cowboy hat, studying my features for a vibration under the skin. The effort was visible in my face, and I felt ashamed. No wonder the boy had seemed disgusted: He must have seen the longing in me. Seen how my face was blatant with need, like an orphan's empty dish. And that was the difference between me and the black-haired girl- her face answered all it's own questions.
— Emma Cline, The Girls
If I like a moment, I don't like to have the distraction of camera - I just want to stay in it.
— The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
From tomorrow on, I will be a happy man; Grooming, chopping, and travelling all over the world. From tomorrow on, I will care foodstuff and vegetables, Living in a house toward the sea, with Spring Blossoms.
— Hai Zi
Explore in the inside of you and discover your true potential. After your discovery, ameliorate on it and it will yield to an endless success.
— Sam Adeyinka
I suppose if you take enough slim chances, you are bound to create success out of one if you stick with it long enough. Either way, imagine what you might be able to learn in the process - about the work, and yes, of yourself too.
— Chris Hill
You can't reinvent yourself using spare parts..."--Barry Randall from My Father's Ashes
— Bruce Jenvey, My Father's Ashes: A Young Man's Journey Through His Father's Life
Don’t waste a good idea or allow it to die inside you. One idea can bring you to the top, make your day or spark off chains of success chain reactions.
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
Your unlived tomorrow is more important than your Lived yesterday
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Repositioning Yourself for Greater Success
While women have come far in their ability to speak on their own behalf, there are many women who compromise what they want to say and what they actually say. Almost all women experience a dissonance between inner and outer. As a matter of emotional and sometimes physical survival, women have found it necessary to split their speech into two parts. One kind of speech is suppressed, occurring only in safe settings with intimates or within the ultimate safety of a woman's own mind.The second kind of speech is the publicly acceptable type that conforms to social expectations. The injunction to suppress certain feelings or thoughts can be so powerful that a woman may not be aware of it and may honestly believe that publicly acceptable speech is all she has in her. Carol Gilligan's work describes the destructive effects of this splitting of voice, especially in young girls who, as they embark on adolescence, have trouble speaking with clarity and strength. An emphasis on listening cultivates a stronger expression of voice. Listening is a crucial component in Imago Theory, where couples are taught to mirror, or repeat back, each other's thoughts, feelings, and needs as a way of building not only their partner's sense of self, but their own. Our core self becomes stronger when it is mirrored back. Voice that is not mirrored dies. When the process of mirroring is followed by validating and empathizing, a deep listening is done with feeling. All of us need validation -- that who we are, what we think, and how we feel does make sense. And the deepest form of listening is empathy, by which we are able to resonate on a soul level with the feelings and needs of one another.A wise proverb states that "Speech is silver, Silence is gold," reminding us of the forgotten value of silence. Feminist theorist Patrocinio Schweickart chose those words as the title of her article on talking and listening that parallels the inward and outward rhythm of Imago dialogue. She points our attention to the value of quiet as a tool that helps us notice the complex interplay of inner and outer that characterizes any creative process. For something new to happen, we need silence and receptivity as well as action and productivity. While some theorists see speaking as active and listening as passive, Schweickart and Imago Theory both point to the reality that both speaking and listening are active. Listening is a way of meaning-making. Theologian Nelle Morten refers to this dynamic as "hearing each other into speech."Ultimately, the development of authentic voice is a process that involves that involves a flow between speaking and listening. In listening, one becomes attuned to the surroundings so that speech becomes relevant and meaningful. This undulating rhythm of speaking and listening is the bedrock for dialogue in Imago Theory and for all of us who care about relationship.
— Helen LaKelly Hunt, Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance
It's like you're a mirror and you show me who I want to be, instead of who I am.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Retribution of Mara Dyer
If I had married, there is much I would not have learned of myself. This has been hard and painful and horrible. But I've learned that I'm stronger than hard, better than pain, and that with enough luck, horrible can go away.
— Courtney Milan, Once Upon a Marquess
It’s natural that self-discovery is a lifelong, ever-shifting process, and that what you are drawn to will likely change at various points in your life.
— Dave Shepp
You don't just read a book to find adventure. You read a book to find yourself.
— C.E. Dimond
Experiment to discover how little you need.
— Alan Cohen
Who hasn't asked himself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand.
— Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes
Satnav will get us quickly and all-too-predictably from A to B, but the path of life is more interesting when we’re allowed to explore the side streets.
— Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2
A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle.
— Lily Brooks-Dalton, Motorcycles I've Loved: A Memoir
I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
You carry the message you've been seeking, but realization of it is found in healthy retrospection, not among the wilderness of chaotic noise.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The price one pays when choosing exile is the loss of all that defines you as an individual. The only thing that makes this immense loss tolerable is the discovery of a self you did not know existed - of a true independence. That is the real gift of America, not its fabled wealth and prosperity.
— Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Do something,get something. Do nothing,get nothing. Doing is the beginning of being. Being is the beginning of achieving. Achieving is the essence of living and living is the spices of life
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
You cannot win your future if you cannot forgive your past
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
You can create viable ventures out of turbulent adventure.
— Ikechukwu Joseph
Is it bad to like the way the scars look on my skin? Oh, the way they feel under my hands. My body’s protecting itself, saying, “No, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.
— Taylor Rhodes, Sixteenth Notes: The Breaking of the Rose-Colored Glasses
Life is a deep and contemplative story stuck on repeat. love, loss, self-destruction, self-discovery
— Pete Wentz, Gray
I am astounded at how long it takes to discover... for the first time,the things I have learned... over and over again all my life.
— Portia Nelson
If four of you are playing hide and seek you'll only ever find the other three. For you are already right here. So what on earth is it that you're looking for? You are the very thing that you seek.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
And most importantly, the next time someone asks you "Who are you?" you must answer in this simple way, with sincerity and conviction: "I am an Earth Citizen
— Ilchi Lee, Earth Citizen: Recovering Our Humanity
Lift your eyes and look on the FIELDS (Jon 4:35),there are viable opportunities
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
People are your responsibility and character is the hidden powers that cause the miracle people
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
The city had seemed like a great place to discover who you are. It just seemed that there was a lot to experience here, as if all you had to do was show up and the city would take care of the rest, making sure you got the education, the maturing, the wising-up you needed. Its crowds, the noise, the endlessness of it all, the perpetual motion, felt exciting then—revealing—just the deep end I needed to jump into. There is something unique about New York, some quality, some matchless, pertinent combination of promise and despair, wizardry and counterfeit, abundance and depletion, that stimulates and allows for a reckoning to occur—maybe even forces it. The city pulls back the curtain on who you are; it tests you and shows you what you are made of in a way that has become iconic in our popular culture, and with good reason.
— Sari Botton, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
Every new self-discovery leads you to more wholeness, opens your heart, makes you humble, and a better person to serve and love others.
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
I never understood that everyone feels lost temporarily when they want to change their world and the state of their life
— Priya Kumar, The Perfect World: A Journey to Infinite Possibilities
Every new self-discovery leads you to more wholeness, opens your heart, makes you humble, and a better person to serve and love others." Page 8
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
Perhaps she just needed to remind herself more often how that gold was still floating above her head, it's minuscule particles visible only when pierced by a certain light.
— Francesca Marciano, The Other Language
Imagine your body becoming that of a stranger. Imagine the sensation of it being not yours, as you discover what it feels like to do this, or to have this happen to you, for the very first time. Imagine it happening with sickening slowness, or with shocking speed, that discovery. And then imagine knowing it has come too late.
— Neil Bartlett, Skin Lane
Stay with and pursue your dreams, and history will tell your stories in golden, glossy and embossed shining foils
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
You need to understand your potentials to transform it. look in to Yourself, upwards to God then outwards to your environ
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Discovering Yourself
Sometimes our emotions rule us. How we handle the consequences . . . defines us.
— Kat Bastion, Forged in Dreams and Magick
God is funny. He had a funny day when he made me. A funny, thoughtful, crazy day. He gave me a physique by which I would be so easily and so quickly judged, then gave me a mind by which I would so deeply magnetize, He put within me a heart with small, fast wings that I can hardly, barely handle, and then gave me a voice that hides behind everything in whispers. Oh, and also put a pen in my hand which writes me into madness! How can anyone possibly understand me? But I don't think God cared about that thought, when He made me! How ridiculously unfair!
— C. JoyBell C.
All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.
— Ralph Ellison
Oh, don't pull your hand away from me, I've promised myself that maybe by the end of this impossible narrative I shall understand, oh maybe it will be on Hell's road that I shall be able to find what we need—but don't pull your hand away, even though I now know that the finding has to come on the road of what we are, if I can succeed in not sinking completely into what we are.
— Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Still, as much as I had experienced, there was more waiting to be found. I had started out with a feeling of burning dullness and desperation. Now I was filled with a thrill and expectation of new discovery.
— Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America
Do not fear emptiness. It is the dwelling place of possibility. Nothing can be added to a vessel that is already full.~Malachi
— Stephanie Stamm, A Gift of Wings
The purported insight achieved by the patient is not the product of a process of veridical self-discovery, but rather reflects the patient’s conversion to the therapist’s interpretation.
— Adolf Grünbaum
And because she did not shove this down my throat, this dawned on me.
— Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son
It is quite interesting to discover who we really are. It might take some time, but eventually we do.
— Alexandra Kinias, Black Tulips
Maybe I didn't march to the same drummer as most people, but I could do things on my own and do them well. That was what I'd learned, little by little, in the year I turned sixteen. I was complete by myself.
— Diane Schwemm, The Year I Turned Sixteen
We all change, and we all feel rudderless at times. there is nothing wrong in allowing yourself to drift.~Zeke
— Stephanie Stamm, A Gift of Wings
Every problem has one immediate cause, many remote causes, long term and short term effects
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Repositioning Yourself for  Greater Success
The difference between the ordinary and extraordinary is the extra. Go the extra mile and enter your extraordinary success
— Ikechukwu Joseph, Repositioning Yourself for  Greater Success
Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself.
— Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat
But, astonishingly, I'm not broken. I'm not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died, I somehow found myself to be a different person. ... Living my life. And it wouldn't be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love.
— Rosamund Lupton, Sister
I have rubbed, knocked and brushed up against a thousand windows, trying to get an image.
— Anthony Liccione
What no one really talks about, though, is the main reason many of us fail with our weight loss efforts: our minds won't let us.
— Helen M. Ryan, 21 Days to Change Your Body