c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
No matter the level of opposition from external forces, whoever God has elevated, will definitely stay elevated.
Until the end of time, success will always be available to anyone who is willing and ready to pay its price.
Life has never been about dwelling on the past negative chapters of your life; instead, it is about creating new fulfilling ones.
Why envy someone else's success when God has already blessed you with a mind to strive and achieve yours?
One of the inevitable in life is, if you consistently push yourself hard enough with a very strategic plan, the outcomes of your life would never be like they were in the past.
We all have the potential to climb to greater heights through the infinite powers of dreams and actions.
Never waste any moment of your life seeking approval or acceptance from people. They are not your creator.
In order to discover your true self, you must first unconditionally fall in love with your imperfect life.
Vow to always persevere through your struggles, challenges, and obstacles until you arrive at the rewarding end of them.
If life doesn't give up on you in good times, why then would you dare to give up on it in tough times?
The society would never dictate the pace of your life on earth, if you truly know who you are and what you positively stand for.
When you start to focus on your daily positive experiences, you would surely come to realize that there is always something to be thankful for each day.
Always bear in mind that you came into this life to impress God and not the society.
If you don't like the feeling that you are experiencing, then it is time to challenge and replace that thought that is producing it. Thoughts always give birth to feelings.
Only the weak finds comfort in making excuses and pointing finger.
Living miserably isn't what your destiny is made of. Therefore, always give yourself enough reasons why your life is nothing but a blissful journey.
Try not to be a person of faith without work or work without faith.
You never know whose life you could change from a single act of kindness. There are so many broken people in this world that would truly appreciate your act of selflessness.
Stop being too hard on yourself. Countless of people all around the world would love to have your life just as it currently is.
It is really not about living life
—  instead it is about living it wisely.
God believes in the reality of your dreams, and so do I. But the question is, do you strongly believe in your abilities?
The only approval that you need in your life, is the one that comes from God.
In the end, success will surely be the final outcome. But until then, try not to count yourself out of the race.
It would be a great disappointment for you to give up on yourself before the appointed time to reap the fruit of your labor.
Who says that you have to belittle others in order to feel good about yourself?
It's time to rise to the challenge and push beyond that pain and receive your blessing. You are truly favored by God.
Too many people are counting on you to cross that finish line. Please don't disappoint yourself and them.
The presence of fear doesn't mean that you lack what it takes to strive and win. It only means that you stepping into a whole new territory.
Aside from God, you are your best helping hand. God has already blessed you with the ability to always strive and thrive. Try not to disappoint yourself.
A lot of people forget that it is not only about how much money that you make, but mainly about how much you get to save from it.
Unlike people, God will never turn His back on you. Trust in Him with all your heart, and you will never have to worry about being betrayed.
You don't have to get emotional and bitter at their negative opinions of you; instead, you have to rise to the challenge and show them that you are truly made of massive success. Vow to always push forward with faith and courage.
When most people think about success, the first thing that usually comes to their minds is money. But in reality, that is not what success is really made of. Success is triumphing in every endeavor that you engage yourself in. Success is getting back up after been knocked down by circumstances. Success is not allowing fears and doubts to keep you stagnant or cause you to move backwards.
Always be grateful with the small things because they are the beginning of bigger and better things to come.
To anyone who is living with uncontrollable worries: Your life isn't as bad as you think it is. It is your frequent negative interpretations of it that are making you feel that way. Try giving your life some positive meanings on a regular basis and see how good your life becomes.
Never allow any level of success to steal your humility. You are not the first person to succeed on earth
—  neither will you be the last one to do so. Please humble yourself and never treat others like they are inferior to you.
You are too blessed to ever dare to settle for an empty life.
Making each moment count positively is all that life demands from you.
Just because you have a lot of money in your bank account, doesn't mean that you should start feeling rich and spend it all. There is something called, "investment.
Your future self would surely thank your present self if you start to wisely invest your money now.
Success has always been a product of having an unstoppable drive to make each day count creatively and productively.
It is almost impossible to live a life of failure if one learns to have faith in God and in oneself.
Always remember that you have the right to be positively different.
As long as you are still breathing, you definitely haven't reached your highest potential on earth. Always challenge yourself to do better.
A life of no limitations is the only state of living that you should always bargain for.
One of the benefits of having God on your side is that you would never have to worry about what your life would become if the world was to turn its back on you. God has everything that your positive inner-self hungers for.
While you are waiting for that special opportunity, be sure to prepare yourself well enough to seize it when it comes.
Put God first in all that you do, and He will never place you last in any race.
Too many people are quick to dream big, but slow to act on it.
Making excuses and pointing fingers will never make up for one's lack of success. So why even dare to waste any time on them?
There is absolutely no shortcut to success other than paying the price that its prize demands.
Thinking that success is only based on money is one of the main reasons why so many people live a very competitive worldly lifestyle, and this often lead them to turn their backs on so many precious things in life in the name of chasing money.
You don't have to get emotional and bitter at their negative opinions of you; instead,you have to rise to the challenge and show them that you are truly made of massive success. Vow to always push forward with faith and courage.
Enjoy life while you still have it. No one knows their time of departure from the face of this earth. Therefore, be sure to always seize every moment that comes to you, and make it very memorable.
Learn to thank God in good times instead of only praying to Him in times of trials and tribulations.
To whoever it is that is going through a heart break or a disappointing experience, stay strong and always remember that time accompanied with repeated positive interpretations are the best healers.
In order to succeed greatly without limitations, you must perceive life as a journey of endless possibilities and opportunities.
A person with a good heart will always earn my utmost respect over an arrogant individual with all the worldly treasures in their hands.
I love the life that living not because I have achieved all my dreams, but because I am very grateful for every little blessing in my life. I grew up hearing that 'half a loaf of bread is better than none.
Happiness is a feeling that can never be created without constantly reminding yourself about the things that are good in your life instead of the things that are bad about it.
In every circumstance, always remember that you can only be as happy or miserable as you repeatedly interpret your life to be.
The absence of the spirit of gratitude in one's heart, always hinders the presence of happiness in one's life.
You are truly as important as everyone else. People's opinions of you will always be irrelevant as long as you keep holding positive beliefs about your life and abilities.
Just because you aren't rich or wealthy doesn't mean that you aren't successful. Life is full so many challenges, which pushing beyond each one of them is truly a success of its own
Be the positive light that the crowd follows
—  instead of allowing them to block your light to your true purpose on earth.
The precious gift of life alone, is more than enough to give thanks to God on a daily basis.
I dare you to never ever give yourself a single reason why a life of positive fulfillment isn't your true destiny on earth.
The beginning of success starts first from strongly believing that God brought you into this life to prosper.
The crown of massive success is upon us all. Hold strong to your faith and continue to give your dreams your very best.
Be the best representation of your true positive self, because people will always have something to say no matter how you choose to live your life. So you might as well live your life the best possible way that makes you happy.
Don't be like those who only remember God when they are in desperate need of something. He definitely deserves to be praised in good and bad times.
It is impossible to climb to greater heights while holding on to one's past ordeals.
Never dare to lower your self-confidence in order to please those who can't stand you because you strongly believe in your abilities.
You are not the only one that is going through some struggles, challenges and obstacles. There is no need to be too hard on yourself. This too will surely pass away just like all that you have been through in the past. Stay strong and keep your faith alive. God is on your side.
No matter how cold this world gets, please don't lose touch of morality and allow it to turn your heart cold.
It is almost impossible to not triumph to bigger and better things, if you aren't afraid to make mistakes, learn from them, and try again with a better approach.
Make it a habit to give yourself enough reasons to relentlessly push forward with a high level of enthusiasm. You are more mentally stronger than you could ever possibly imagine.
A blissfully united family shines much brighter than most of life's greatest blessings.
Some people can't stand to see others succeed with their dreams. But little do they know that it is a blessing to know a lot of successful people, because they can motivate one to push beyond one's comfort zone. Therefore, vow to never be a product of jealousy.
Some negative things in life will never change, but try not to let them change you.
Sometimes, some people wonder why they have too many enemies, but when you look closely at the way that they treat others, you would clearly see the main reason behind it. Have respect for yourself and others, and you wouldn't have to worry about having a million enemies.
Never stop reminding yourself that God created you to be mentally and physically tougher than your struggles, challenges and obstacles.
At no given point in life should you stop aiming for a better mindset, a greater drive, and the attainment more positive results.
You and you alone have the power to convince yourself to believe that you are inferior to others. Therefore, it's your sole responsibility to never look down on yourself. God definitely doesn't think that you are inferior or unimportant.
Speak life into your goals. Follow up with consistent actions, and at the appointed time, you would surely start to see them transform into realities.
You would never know what you are truly capable of until quitting is no longer a way out.
Life would never seize to be a beautiful journey if you approach each day with the right positive mindset.
The pie of success is undoubtedly big enough for everyone to work hard enough for it and get a hefty slice.
Who would I be without God's daily guidance and protection? Absolutely a lost soul. That being said, in God I will forever trust.
Devil must really hate me a lot because I consistently refuse to give him an opportunity to win over my soul.
As long as you continue to be in positive control of your thoughts and beliefs, your life will never seize to be a beautiful journey.
One with God stands with majority.
There is always a priceless feeling that comes with going to sleep at night knowing that you did your very best on the tasks that you set for the day. Fears, doubts, and procrastinations are the enemies of your true destiny.
It is highly important to learn to become a good critical thinker, so that you could effectively govern your daily decisions and actions. This would surely prevent you from allowing others to control your mind, and possibly mislead you in life.
If you think that your life is nothing but pain and suffering, then it is very obvious that you have been directing your daily thoughts in the direction of the darkest side of life. However, the truth still remains; which is that we all have a bright side to be thankful for in our various lives. It is a matter of changing your interpretations of your experiences.
Life can only be as blissful or as miserable as we repeatedly interpret it to be.
Why should you live in the past when the present already has everything that you need to start a new beginning?
Strive to become the best version of your original self. That's where your true fulfillment in life lies.
No other version, no matter how perfect it is, would ever feel better than being your true self.
You can't continue to complain about the lack of happiness in your life, but at the same time holding on to the thoughts that produce unhappiness. Consistent negative thoughts and the feeling of happiness can never co-exist in the same mind at the same time.
You definitely can't forget everything that happened in your past. But you can place some positive interpretations on them, so that they don't control your present and future emotions and feelings.
Isn't it very awkward how disrespectful people tend to be the same ones to desperately demand respect from others?
No other version no matter how perfect it is, would ever feel better than being your true self.
Never give yourself some excuses why you are too busy to exercise. Your health is the foundation of your life. Please do your best to keep it healthy at all times.
The repeated interpretations that you place on your experiences will never fail to determine your constant feelings towards them.
Why surround yourself with people who constantly pull you back, when you could be with those who would push you forward to the land of abundance?
Isn't it awkward how a lot of the people who tell others to 'stop being cheap,' are usually the same ones that end up borrowing money from them?
Does it matter if the whole world is standing against you, if God is already on your side, guiding and protecting you?
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
— Oscar Wilde
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
— William Shakespeare
It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
— Mahatma Gandhi
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner v
— Steve Jobs
Who are you?""No one of consequence.""I must know.""Get used to disappointment.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.
— Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice
What's in a name? that which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.
— George MacDonald
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.
— David Sedaris, Holidays on Ice
Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.
— Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. 1
You know what I am." The words breathed out in an auguished whisper. "I'm part demon, Clary. Part demon. You understood that much, didn't you?" His eyes bored into her like drills. "You saw what Valentine was trying to do. He used demon blood-used it on me before I was even born. I'm part monster. Part everthing I've tried so hard to burn out, to destroy.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
— John Berger, Ways of Seeing
If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward, and ugly. Your sense of inner beauty has to remain a very private thing.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.
— Khaled Hosseini
I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.
— Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Without dignity, identity is erased.
— Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different?
— Tamora Pierce, Alanna: The First Adventure
We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you've been granted.
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here," he said, so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you… I have no name.
— Diana Gabaldon, Voyager
I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.
— Janet Frame, Towards Another Summer
All you need to validly be bi is to identify! It's so true it rhymes.
— Ashley Mardell
That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
who are youreally?you are not a nameor a height, or a weightor a genderyou are not an ageand you are not where you are fromyou are your favorite booksand the songs stuck in your headyou are your thoughts and what you eat for breakfaston Saturday morningsyou are a thousand thingsbut everyone choosesto see the million thingsyou are notyou are not where you are fromyou arewhere you are goingand i'd liketo go theretoo
— m.k
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump
—  you may be freeing him from being a camel.
He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.
— Gustave Flaubert, November
What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
— Eckhart Tolle
His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Be not another, if you can be yourself. 
— Paracelsus
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
— Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents - each man to see what the other looked like.
— Beryl Markham, West with the Night
I'm just Phil from Rossendale. And now people are screaming for me 'cause I make YouTube videos - it's just crazy!
— Phil Lester
It's not a real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants.
— Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life. ~ Bran
— Patricia Briggs, Cry Wolf
Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.
— Jean Baudrillard
I won't sleepif that's what it takesto not wake upas myself
— Casey Renee Kiser, Hold Me Under: Poems to Drown to
We shape our buildings
—  thereafter they shape us.
The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names... Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best advantage -- the surest means to success, the surest course to failure. (p. 72)
— Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl
The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
— Eckhart Tolle
I'm learning quickly, once you quit one thing, it gets easier and easier just to leave situations rather than deal with shit.
— Doug   Cooper, Outside In
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling --just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is...a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm...It's me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose.
— Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches
The identity of the Filipino today is of a person asking what is his identity.
— Nick Joaquín, Culture and History
I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?'" 'The way I want it?'" 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?'" 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.'" 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.'" 'Mess it up how?'" 'Forgot it.'" 'Forgot?'" 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.
— Toni Morrison, Jazz
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...
— W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975
Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe?
— Scott Turow, Ordinary Heroes
If I wasn't me, you wouldn't be you.
— Kamila Shamsie, Kartography
But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.
— Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes
I am not one and simple, but complex and many.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
We are what we love. We are the things, the people, the ideas we spend our days with. They center us, they drive us, they define us to our very core.Without them, we are empty.
— Daisy Whitney, The Rivals
Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.
— Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls
I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore.
— Brenna Yovanoff, The Space Between
I am neither I nor the other oneI am something in between
— Mário de Sá-Carneiro
He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:So I, to find a mother and a brother,In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.
— William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
— Henry David Thoreau
At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose *your* self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one--which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your *I*.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices
— Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.
— Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.
— Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
I look like vanilla pudding so nobody knows that on the inside I am spider soup.
— Andrea Portes, Anatomy of a Misfit
I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond.
— André Breton
It’s scary telling someone you care about, someone you love who you really are.
— Eric Jerome Dickey, Genevieve
Tell me who loves, who admires you, and I will tell you who you are.
— Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
So who do I want to be tomorrow?
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.
— Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
We are what we are...
— Ke$ha
Before 1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino
—  after 1565 we can be nothing but Filipino.
Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that.
— David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
He wished he could be anywhere else and anyone else but Here and Him.
— James R. Silvestri, Hawthorn Road
Looking for who I am is who I am.
— Tom Spanbauer, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
In our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.
— Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. The moving about that the city mutliplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place -- an experience that is, to be sure, broken up into countless tiny deportations (displacements and walks), compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately, the place but is only a name, the City...a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places.
— Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
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 Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity
To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive...
— Malcolm X
At least when one speaks of oneself one is passionate, well-informed and specific.
— Jan Neruda, Prague Tales
Most gay men are as sexist in their thinking as are heterosexuals. Their patriarchal thinking leads them to construct paradigms of desirable sexual behaviour that is similar to that of patriarchal straight men.
— bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
We must be trying to learn who we really are rather than trying to tell ourselves who we should be.
— John Powell, Books By John Powell: Unconditional Love/Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am/The Secret Of Staying In Love/Fully Human, Fully Alive
Whisper to the flashing water your real name, write your signature in the sand, and shout your identity to the sky until it answers to you in thunder.
— Christopher John Farley, Kingston by Starlight
Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners. 
— Michael Ondaatje
We keep coming back to the question of representation because identity is always about representation. People forget that when they wanted white women to get into the workforce because of the world war, what did they start doing? They started having a lot of commercials, a lot of movies, a lot of things that were redoing the female image, saying, “Hey, you can work for the war, but you can still be feminine.” So what we see is that the mass media, film, TV, all of these things, are powerful vehicles for maintaining the kinds of systems of domination we live under, imperialism, racism, sexism etc. Often there’s a denial of this and art is presented as politically neutral, as though it is not shaped by a reality of domination.
— bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies
...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with.
— Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse locations extols a vision of cultural hybridity, border crossing, subjectivity constructed out of plurality, the vast majority of folks in this society still believe in a notion of identity that is rooted in a sense of essential traits and characteristics that are fixed and static.
— bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics
Perhaps we have stopped ourselves from being invented, from self-realization, by blaming others for our wordlessness.
— Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado
o•cean (ˈōSHən) n. pl. -s. 1. The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there. [2015, Whittier]
— Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.
— Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you
— Neil Gaiman
Am I too much for the world, or is the world too much for me?
— Kelli Jae Baeli, Too Much World
Behind every mask there is a face, and behind that a story.
— Marty Rubin
I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight.
— Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother.
— Gary D. Schmidt, Okay for Now
To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of wish, this lack of interest, this indifference, this automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him, that makes him angry.If a man who speaks pidgin to a man of color or an Arab does not see anything wrong or evil in such behavior, it is because he has never stopped to think.
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can't define your identity.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Fluidity means that our black identities are constantly changing as we respond to circumstances in our families and communities of origin, and as we interact with a wider world.
— bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism
In order to live a meaningful life,humans need answers, i.e., a certain understanding of basic existential questions. These ‘answers’ do not have to be made completely explicit, as a lack of words does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but one has to able to place oneself in the world and build a relatively stable identity. The founding of such an identity is only possible if one can tell a relatively coherent story about who one has been and who one intends to be.
— Lars Fr. H. Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom
The end comes to all of us...but the end comes quicker to those who do not live their lives as they choose. If your life is not your own, then in what way is it living?
— Christopher John Farley, Kingston by Starlight
I was a rule-follower. I obeyed all forms of authority. I had never before encountered a situation where the authority was clearly wrong and I had to stand up for what was right.
— Linda Kage, The Color of Grace
I know who I am, and I know who you are, and nothing else matters. it's how we live our life.
— Tal McThenia, A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation
By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
— Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
I got in a fight with my girlfriend," I said. "I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?"Well, you should be more careful where you drive," the officer said. "You're making people nervous. You don't fit the profile of the neighborhood."I wanted to tell him that I didn't fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble.
— Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Without them, we'd be unidentifiable. We have to reinvent ourselves every minute.
— Nicole Krauss, Man Walks Into a Room
Questions from earlier circle like buzzards. Am I running away or moving forward?
— Doug   Cooper, Outside In
Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance. Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities for yourself. It will look at first like disaster, but is really good fortune in disguise, since fate too knows how to follow your evasions through a hundred forms of its own. Now you will become at last the one you intended to be.
— David Malouf, An Imaginary Life
After the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us.
— Carson McCullers, The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings
So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.
— Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions
Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,–however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right; it is at once a staff and a baton.
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.
— P.D. James, Innocent Blood
Practical! On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. What's up?
— Kit Williams, Masquerade
Dani said this woman, with whom she’d lived for two years, had never known her. “I feel like people accept the first thing I show them,” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.
— Mary Gaitskill, Don't Cry
She was right. After all, if she herself had wondered whether she was Indian enough -- she, who had always been to me a sort of epitome of Indian -- then who could be? Who could claim the sole right or way to an identity?
— Tanuja Desai Hidier, Born Confused
Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
For a long time, we assume we know who we are, until the moment we fully realize who that is; in that moment, identity is no longer predictable, but rather takes the form of a truth that, like any other, can become a sentence with no more than a change of perspective.
— Sergio Chejfec, The Planets
Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle?
— Sergio Chejfec, The Planets
We choose who we will be
—  how we will act.
With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
People change, though, especially after they are dead.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
The fact that both ego and self say "I" is a source of confusion and misidentification. The well-informed ego says truly, "I am what I know myself to be." The self says merely, "I am.
— Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.
— Isabel Allende, Paula
No one knows me. Not anymore
— Zoë Marriott
...being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
I am a commuter, not between the city and the village, although I do this frequently; not between the inane idealism of the classroom and the stifling reality beyond it, which I must do for survival and self-respect. I am a commuter between what I am now and what I was and would like to be and it is this commuting at lightning speed, at the oddest hours, that has done havoc to me.
— F. Sionil José