c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There is wisdom in climbing mountains... For they teach us how truly small we are.
— Jeff Wheeler, The Wretched of Muirwood
You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it.
— Orison Swett Marden, Pushing to the Front
Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart's, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social difference between a rich Indian and a poor one. Generally speaking, Indian is Indian. A few who gain wealth and power as lawyers, businessmen, artists, or doctors may marry white people and keep only white friends, but generally Indians of different classes interact freely with one another. Most unemployed or working poor, some with good jobs and steady incomes, but all mixing together. Wilson also did not realize how tribal distinctions were much more important than economic ones. The rich and poor Spokanes may hang out together, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Spokanes are friendly with the Lakota or Navajo or any other tribe. The Sioux still distrust the Crow because they served as scouts for Custer. Hardly anybody likes the Pawnee. Most important, though, Wilson did not understand that the white people who pretend to be Indian are gently teased, ignored, plainly ridiculed, or beaten, depending on their degree of whiteness.
— Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer
Yeah. She'd manipulated the second most powerful vampire in town into taking her side against a psycho bitch-queen sorority girl. She'd talked rationally about putting people's brains into computers. This was a normal day. No wonder she was screwed up.
— Rachel Caine, Kiss of Death
Hertzfeld recalled that Gates just sat there coolly, looking at Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Yes, happiness is dependent upon misery. For we all feel a swell of happiness after our circumstances improve from a misery recently suffered.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Reading is a sage way to bump up against life. Reading may be an escape, but it is not an escape from my own life and problems.  It is an escape from the narrow boundaries of being only me. Reading in some wonderful ways helps me find out who I am. When she was a young girl Patricia MacLachlan's mother encouraged her to "read a book and find out who you are." And it is true that in some ways reading defines me as it refines me. Reading enlarges my vision of the world; it helps me understand someone who is different from me. It makes me bigger on the inside. We tend to see the world from our own perspective; it is good to see it from the eyes of others. Good literature helps me understand who I am in relation to what others experience. Far from being an escape from reality, good literature is a window into reality. I read to feel life.
— Gladys M. Hunt, Honey for a Woman's Heart: Growing Your World through Reading Great Books
A big thing will remain a big thing until a bigger thing will occur.
— TPK
The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy.
— Hwang Sok-yong, The Old Garden
Leave it to a vampire to think a healthy guy in his late thirties or early forties was on his deathbed.
— MaryJanice Davidson, Undead and Unpopular
Just say it: I'm angry and no one will like me. God: No, I will not say that. But don't you think we ached for you to find a love you could share your whole life with? I used your teachers to encourage you creatively when the church could not... I worked with whatever I got my hands on. Can you see that?
— Susan E. Isaacs, Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir
If peace comes from seeing the whole,then misery stems from a loss of perspective.We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like.When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.
— Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
It's HE-RO," the boy argued."No," the girl insisted,"it's HER-O.
— Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1
You have to thank God for the seemingly good and the seemingly bad because really, you don't know the difference [until we get to heaven].
— Jennie Allen, Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul
It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they've got the time-span all wrong. From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well.
— Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
We often think that there is just one way to look at things - the way we always have. In fact, there are an infinite number of ways to look at most everything. An open mind allows for a multitude of perspectives from which to choose in any given moment. That suppleness of mind allows for true choice, and opens us to a whole new realm of possibility.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
Real? Real depends upon your perspective, Annabelle. People never see life exactly the same way. The world is what you think it is.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher
Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming--Diana and Helen--and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.
— John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
the greater number of a man's errors come before him disguised under the specious form of necessity; then, after error has been committed in a moment of excitement, of delirium, or of fear, we see that we might have avoided and escaped it.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...I look out at the world through your transparent face...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
The study of the past helps us to appreciate that the ideas and values of our own age are just as provisional and transient as those of bygone ages. The intelligent and reflective engagement with the thought of a bygone era ultimately subverts any notion of "chronological snobbery". Reading texts from the past makes it clear that what we now term "the past" was once "the present", which proudly yet falsely regarded itself as having found the right intellectual answers and moral values that had eluded its predecessors.
— C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet
I believe there no surer path to leaping dramatically forward in your career than to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities. Because the thought leaders in our industry are not the ones who plodded dully, step by step, up the career ladder. The leaders are the ones who took chances and developed unique perspectives.
— Damon Horowitz
It doesn’t take objectivity to know what you want, and you’re not objective enough to know what you need.
— Amy Neftzger, The Orphanage of Miracles
There were always people who struggled their way to the top of the heap, no matter how much that heap looked like garbage when seen from the outside.
— Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Silence
How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.
— Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Sometimes there is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and if you're dyslexic like me you can't tell the difference.
— Bruce Bickford
Everyone’s perception is different
—  we all see different things. I personally think you see what you want to see.
I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her.Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: “It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.
— Bill Cosby
As small as a world as large as alone.
— E.E. Cummings
Once the blinders are off, it's rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to.
— Mercedes Lackey, The Fairy Godmother
If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that if you carry on as though nothing strange is happening, it usually stops being strange
— Sarah-Kate Lynch, On Top of Everything
Each of us sees things not as they are but as we are.
— Jack Provonsha
Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.
— Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
I am grateful for the rare opportunities to look at my circumstances from a higher perspective, one detached from the dim outlook I normally insist on seeing. These periodic glimpses show me life's grandeur.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,—this is the very struggle of progress.
— Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three
Nations tend to see the other side's war atrocities as systemic and indicative of their culture and their own atrocities as justified or the acts of stressed combatants. In my travels, I sense a smoldering resentment towards WWII Japanese behavior among some Americans. Ironically, these feelings are strongest among the younger American generation that did not fight in WWII. In my experience, the Pacific vets on both sides have made their peace. And in terms of judgments, I will leave it to those who were there. As Ray Gallagher, who flew on both atomic missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki argues, "When you're not at war you're a good second guesser. You had to live those years and walk that mile.
— James D. Bradley, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
...consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
He had no ideal world of dead heroes
—  he knew little of the life of men in the past
...you've lost perspective? Well, get it back - God alone has the third person point of view in this life ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Let me be one of the upward and outward lookers, not one of the downward and inward lookers.
— Alfred Edersheim
There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
...what happens tomorrow is the future but what happened yesterday is already part of on-going history...
— Peggy Herbert, Tales from Toothaker: How We Used Humor, Hard Work, and Hand-Me-Downs to Create an Island Home
The worm in the radish doesn't think there is anything sweeter.
— Sholem Aleichem
Narratives are the primary way in which we make sense of our lives, as opposed to, for example schema,cognition, beliefs, constructs. Definition of narrative include the important element of giving meaning to events and experiences over time by connecting them as a developing, continuing story.
— Jacqui Stedmon
To me art means power to sway people not with my words but with a mere picture. Art means expression, not my own but of the subjects. Art means truth; because when you see a picture you see all that is real. Art is exposure, showing things in a way they haven’t been seen before.
— CV
Author points out in Woodrow Wilson the flipside of the positive we might call big picture vision. He observes that as college president Wilson resorted to the language of a national crusade when he met resistance in a local, academic issue.
— David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents
Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective.
— Miguel Syjuco
So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
One of the best gifts you can give to someone, is a wider perspective. It's also one of the best gifts you can receive. So if you have given someone a wider perspective, don't feel bad about it (about taking their blindfolds off and having to watch them cringe in the newfound sunlight); I know it's hard, but you're doing them a lasting favor. And a wider perspective can be difficult for you yourself to accept, in the beginning (during the time that you squint while the sunlight stings your own eyes), but later you'll find yourself coming back to it, even if you abandoned it as something worthless; you'll look for it, one day. Or it will grow on you. Perspective.
— C. JoyBell C.
It seemed the more I knew about people the more I knew about the strange magic hidden in their hearts.
— Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima
The successful person and the unsuccessful person are looking at the same world
—  the difference between them is what they see.
Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
To accept the lively, the messy, and the unexpected things in our days, knowing that God sees them and has an eternal perspective, is to say with confidence I receive your timing.
— Emily P. Freeman, Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life
And as I looked at the star, I realised what millions of other people have realised when looking at stars. We’re tiny. We don’t matter. We’re here for a second and then gone the next. We’re a sneeze in the life of the universe.
— Danny Wallace, Danny Wallace and the Centre of the Universe
True inspiration unfolds itself, not by force or it becomes fake. True intuition is also the ability to be observant.
— Chris Messner
Maybe belief is the biggest lie. In ages past, the earliest philosophers tried to explain the stars in the sky and the world around them. One of them conceived of the notion that the universe was mounted on giant crystal spheres controlled by a giant machine, which explained the movements of the heavens. He was laughed at and told that such a machine would be so huge and noisy that everyone would hear it. He simply replied that we are born with that noise all around us, and that we are so used to hearing it that we cannot hear it at all.
— Dan Abnett
Because that world's gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can't make that other one real again. It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don't know what they smelled like, what kind of sounds they made, or how big they really looked standing in the grass under all those fossil fern trees. Even the sunlight must have been different, and the wind. What can bones tell you about a kind of wind that doesn't blow anymore?
— Peter S. Beagle, The Folk of the Air
Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.
— Ralph Ellison
How you look it is pretty much how you'll see it
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
Those two little words -- says you -- are the most powerful argument in any discipline: theology, philosphy, even domestic harmony. They are powerful because they are true. Whenever you say something, it is you who says it. You. And what do you know?
— J. Mark Bertrand, Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World
Perspective was my secret weapon, and books gave me plenty of ammunition.
— Ian McNulty
Yefgenii said, "The Americans spent millions of dollars designing a pen that would work in space. What did we do?" Gevorkian's head was down, his eyes were down. "What did we do?"Gevorkian lifted his head "We used pencils.""We used pencils.
— Jed Mercurio, Ascent
In painting, three things must be considered - the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.
— Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve
We have to care what someone thinks of us. We are incapable of seeing ourselves [sometimes].
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say the present-day relations--the relations of bourgeois production--are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and, as such, eternal.
— Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
— Richard Wright, Native Son
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I can last two months on a good compliment.
— Mark Twain
Some people grow up with issues because they did not have their parents around growing up, many others have issues because their parents were around growing up
— Quetzal
Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity.
— Tamara Rose Blodgett, Unrequited Death
Truthis like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it
— Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth
We must become reacquainted with our true human selves.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Whatever you seek is within you!
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this
— Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death
[Self]-distrust manifests blatantly in the judge's reaction to your experiences of expansion. 'Expansion' here refers to situations when you try something new, success at something you're never done before, stop a self-destructive habit, speak up in your own defense, recognize a truth about yourself, take on a new responsibility, and so on. The expansion is a shift in your sense of who you are or who you have taken yourself to be: who you are becomes a little bigger, includes a little more than it did before.What does the judge do with these moments? Most everyone has experienced some sort of contraction after they expand: some letdown, some fear creeping in, some shame about being bigger, some withdrawal from the expansion. In one sense, this is part of a natural cycle of expansion and contraction. However, the contraction is seldom seen as part of the normal flow of the unfolding soul.
— Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within
There came a time in my life when I had to admit to myself that I have some very clear narcissistic tendencies. Ironically, it occurred during the writing of my book The Emotionally Abused Woman. As I listed the symptoms of narcissism, I was amazed to find that I recognized myself in the description of the disorder.It should have been no surprise to me because I come from a long line of narcissists. My mother and several of her brothers suffered from the disorder, as did her mother. For some reason, though, I imagined that I’d escaped our family curse. I should have known that it’s not that easy to.
— Beverly Engel, The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome: What to Do If Someone in Your Life Has a Dual Personality - Or If You Do
One cannot transcend the body or mind just by repeating the mantra "I am not the body and I am not the mind".
— Amit Ray, OM Sutra: The Pathway to Enlightenment
You were born to live the best of being.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The goal of any spiritual person is to strive towards attaining self-realization by living spontaneously in the present moment of physical reality, free from anxiety and distress, unencumbered by frivolous affections, and liberated from specious attachments.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
In order to deceive others, you must first deceive yourself.
— Efrat Cybulkiewicz
I once renounced my home in Calcutta, and roamed around the villages of Bengal as a monk. But after I attained the Absolute Divine state of Unification with the Universe, I realized that the purpose of life is not renunciation of anything, but the realization of the purpose itself.
— Abhijit Naskar, The Film Testament
I am always in touch with my demons: you never know when their assistence is needed.
— Efrat Cybulkiewicz
No man is his costume
—  it is only what he wears to the dance.
Validate yourself and know that you can achieve great things.
— Gift Gugu Mona
A person employs human reason and intellect to guide our earthly expedition. We can stumble through life satisfying the unconscious dictates of the mind or take control of our life by increasing our level of conscious awareness. Philosophy always commences with an act of consciousness. We must follow our moral passions. We create our reality by what we perceive as truth. We imagine a life that we wish to experience. Live the life that you envision. Do not allow other people or external determinates to control your conception of the self, because otherwise you are living someone else’s life.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
He's got all the pains of being lost and all the benefits of being told where to go. He wants it the other way around.
— Patrick Bryant, Hum A Radiant Sickness
It is important to measure ourselves at least once in life, undertake a personal odyssey that constructs a clarifying prism of our being.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Until you realize who you are, you will not be able to start living the life you are intended to live
— Sunday Adelaja
Through our work and play, each of us eventually becomes a personification of what we cherish in life.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
If a man realizes who he is, he will not be envious of others or condemn them because he knows his own value, uniqueness and peculiar contribution
— Sunday Adelaja
A human should realize himself and be responsible for himself if he wants to become the true person he is to be
— Sunday Adelaja
The absence of conditions for self-realization in a country, region and community leads to stagnation, social and economic crisis
— Sunday Adelaja
Every warrior on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power hidden in his being, and that he can reach it.
— Carlos Castañeda
I have seen the greatest artists and the most eccentric divas in music. The greater and more visionary they were, the more self-reflexive and childlike they behaved.
— Christian Gansch
Harold believed his journey was truly beginning. He had thought it started the moment he decided to walk to Berwick, but he saw now that he had been naïve. Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcame them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now.
— Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
We must live a genuine life in order to discover personal happiness and self-fulfillment. Understanding that a person is living a lie is the first step into realizing what is possible. No matter how frightful such a proposition is, we must dare to be an original self.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
A person au fait with the millenarian edict of knowing oneself does not need a tattoo, pierced ear, or gaudy neck chains to declare who they are. Eccentricity for its own sake is simply a boring fashion statement and not a thoughtful statement of what comprises a wholesome self. A self-poised person does not need to own a luxury car to determine their degree of self-worth. Nor does a self-determined person need to idolize celebrities, hate other people whom they do not wish to exemplify, or live vicariously through other people’s admirable deeds. A person with unique and contented self-identify does not flip through fashion magazines or scan the headlines of gossip magazines when loitering in the supermarket checkout stand. A person who contemplates the meaningfulness of their existence is not fixated with posing in other people’s raiment or observing other people’s nakedness. A person who knows who they are and realizes how to accomplish all of their life goals does not dally by people watching or become distracted by envying other people.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
A person archives self-realization by engaging in deliberate contemplative acts that serve to unify of all aspects of the self. To deny part of the self, a person risks spiritual decay.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
On any given day, you will reach to the state of realization; you will never find any other God, except you. You are the God, you are searching for, either externally or internally.
— Roshan Sharma
She'd made those choices out of fear, and she wasn't afraid anymore. From now on, if something was important to her, she would demand it. Because the truth was that she belonged anywhere she wanted to be, and she was beautiful just for being brave.
— Victoria Helen Stone, Evelyn, After
I reinvented myself. I acquired a taste for evil. I found I have a talent for it. And I murdered the old me.
— Mark Kirkbride, Satan's Fan Club
It must be frustrating to survive the gauntlet that is our western medical schooling system only to one day come to the realization that you have been taught only to manage illness and disease instead of curing it.
— Gary   Hopkins
And there were times where I missed everyone I missed everything and everyone to the bone, I missed younger years where days were easy and everything was so innocently cheesy, I missed myself and my friends and the persons we used to be.
— Thoughts And Writings @wnq-writers.com
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
The breeze is cold and refreshing, I draw the night into my lungs and try to calm myself down.
— Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold, The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am
Life is full of unanswerable questions including how to live and what to live for. It takes extreme courage to live honestly by a person’s beliefs and never rest until a person achieves the type of life that he or she envisions.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
The greatest act of personal courage is conscientiously to mature, by resolutely striving to achieve self-actualization and self-realization. A person who knows their true self and lives their life in an authentic manner while pursuing their honest passions will lose his misery.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
To be alive simply means to have faith, one has faith that the air one breathes will sustain one, hence being alive without the other kind of faith will be counterproductive to the reason one is alive.
— Auliq-Ice
Not until your dreams begin like a dream,it may not have the potentials to become life.
— Auliq-Ice
you can find better than me, worst than me. But you'll never find someone exactly like me.
— Angie
Expectations are the rumors we spread inside us.
— Himanshu Chhabra
All too often, the rabbit hole is as deep as you have dug it.
— Gary   Hopkins
No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Hello, my name is your potential. But you can call me impossible. I am the missed opportunities. I am the expectations you will never fulfill. I am always taunting you, regardless of how hard you try, regardless of how much you hope.
— Nathan Filer
What in your life is calling you,When all the noise is silenced,The meetings adjourned...The lists laid aside,And the Wild Iris bloomsBy itselfIn the dark forest...What still pulls on your soul?”—RUMI
— Robin Gregory
Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.
— Kim Heacox, Jimmy Bluefeather
Wondering is the act of wise living.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Taking the path of least resistance is always helpful and peaceful, which is always in line with your life’s purpose. May be you are successful in what you do but universe will keep trying to bring you back to your purpose.
— Hina Hashmi, Your Life A Practical Guide to Happiness Peace and Fulfilment
Taking the path of least resistance is always helpful and peaceful, which is always in line with your life’s purpose. If your current work area is different than your purpose then you will face extra challenges.
— Hina Hashmi, Your Life A Practical Guide to Happiness Peace and Fulfilment
I seek divinity and spirituality of my soul.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind usis a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another
— Anatole France
Moksha (ultimate liberation) cannot be attained until purity arises. To attain purity one has to realize ‘Who am I?
— Dada Bhagwan
Man's poverty is abysmal, his wants are endless till he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Till then, the world to him is in a state of flux - a phantasm that is and is not.
— Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana
When a man sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relations of his life to his surroundings, - therefore he knows not himself.
— Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana
For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen. In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.I finally questioned it.
— Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir
For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard—respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I’d become someone else entirely.I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.I was proud of the strength I’d found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice—I’d used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly.
— Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir
Confidence is the greatest success.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Service of self is best developed in dealings of service to others.
— Tyler J. Hebert
The wilderness is a place of an encounter with the Creator.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
You may know how to operate computers. You may know a lot about medicine or robots. You may be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or specialist… but, if you don’t know how YOU operate, why your life is the way it is, and how to increase fulfillment, love, and peace in your life - then all the knowledge and degrees aren’t really worth much!
— Maddy Malhotra, How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy
...go live happily alone requires a serious amount of intentional thought. It's not as simple as signing the lease on your own apartment and leaving it at that. You must figure out what you need to feel comfortable at home and in the world, no matter your means (indeed, staying within your means), and arrange your life accordingly--a metaphorical architecture.
— Kate Bolick
In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying... he simply did not, he could not possibly understand it. The example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal-- had seemed to him all his life to be correct only in relation to Caius, but by no means himself. For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general, he had always been quite, quite separate from all other human beings...And Caius is indeed mortal, and it's right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts-- for me it's another matter. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible.So it felt to him.
— Leo Tolstoy
When you know yourself, mirrors turn to glass.
— Girish Kohli
Self Love is about seeing yourself through your own eyes.
— Jasz Gill
Om was there in the existence, when no religion was formed or founded. It will be there in the existence, if all the religions are demolished.
— Banani Ray, Glory of OM: A Journey to Self-Realization
It is the man who loves reading books who gets to know himself
— Ndiritu Wahome, The Sad Artist and Other Fairytales
Everything is transient. You must transcend and transform for higher self realization.
— Debasish Mridha
Imaginary happiness has an “end” and real happiness is “permanent”.
— Dada Bhagwan
Winning Expo 2020 marked the city’s coronation and the world could no longer deny Dubai its rightful status as one of the era’s more illustrious cities. The people who flocked there were looking for some sort of magic to occur in their lives, and life on the beach under these concrete gazebos offered many blessings. Some found riches. Some found religion. Some found love. And some, most importantly of all, found themselves.
— Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams
It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weakness
— Maureen Johnson, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
In foster care it’s easier to measure what you’ve lost over what you have gained, because it there aren’t many gains in that life and you are a prisoner to someone else’s plans for your life.
— John William Tuohy, No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
Wisdom tells me I am nothing, love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Success is never a place or position but a new state of self-realization.
— Debasish Mridha
Never be afraid to your share your story.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
The keys to liberation are universal and essentially simple: disengage from all the stories you've been telling yourself about life and who you are or should be as you negotiate your way through, and all at once you know yourself as divine, all-powerful, unstoppable and magnificent, as any divine, all-powerful, unstoppable being would.
— John C. Parkin, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way
You don’t have to compete with any one. Seek to outdo your own performance. You will always be happy.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Inside is where we meet everyone else
—  it's on the outside that we are truly alone.
Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge.
— Albert Einstein
Stop listening to people who don’t experience happiness, success, peace, and fulfillment themselves. Don't let them tell you what is right and wrong!
— Maddy Malhotra, How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy
Once there is realization of self challenge, ego versus soul, competition with others becomes futile.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Don't restrain yourself to mundaneness. You're subject to consciousness that makes you more than animalistic.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
You must nurture the force within you. You are the only person that can behold the divine force for your divine purpose.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The thing that makes you say, "I want to do something" - that is the beginning of talent.
— Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
There's always something in it for the person who is allowing to be taken advantage of." Psychotherapist David in Type 1 Sociopath
— P.A. Speers, Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People
When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.
— Zig Ziglar
He was home, but he wasn't. He had gotten where he had to go, but he hadn't. He had found out who he was, but he didn't know why it had failed to satify his questions.
— C.J. Cherryh, Fortress of Ice
Too afraid to touch anything, I found sitting in the custom made indow cubby the safest place for me to be as I played games with raindrops. Rainy days made the time pass more quickly as I pretended I was the tiniest raindrop on its descent down the glass. My goal would be to not make it to the bottom. I counted on morphing with the other, bigger raindrops and kept count of the times I won and the times I lost. The heaviness of the storm would dictate my luck. The heavier the storm, the more likely gravity would ruin my chances at survival. When I started losing more than I was winning, I rested my forehead on the cold hard glass and asked them if disintegrating on impact was really all that bad. It was time for a new distraction.
— Cherry Tigris, Toilet Paper People: no ONE is perfect
The self is...a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on.
— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
Decide the type of person you want to be, and when others aren’t looking, unique up on them.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries
I'm not a Perfectionist."I just don't want to get Embarrassed and Ashamed".
— John Paul Butao
We really can’t afford to live our lives walking in some sort of introspective darkness as if the darkness is the only thing that we can walk in.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
You never knelt to get anywhere. You are where you are because you're fucking capable, and willing to risk everything to do right, and I'll never be half what you are even if I tried my whole life, and I was walking around thinking I was better than you, even half dead and no use to anyone, because my family is old, because I was born better.
— Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Don't worry about wanting to change; start worrying when you don't feel like changing anymore. And in the meantime, enjoy every version of yourself you ever meet, because not everybody who discovers their true identity likes what they find.
— Antony John, Five Flavors of Dumb
To live in denial of caring deeply, to hold oneself back from speaking from the heart as a means of self protection, to speak in whispers, to describe what you have together as "this." Oh the sweet sadness of forbidden love.
— Cheryld
No one is destined for greatness. Everyone is just destined to express the greatness that already exists within.
— Aunna Pourang
Empowerment comes from self-realization and recognition of our internal gifts, which we already have.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Any self-realized being has access to the dynamic genius which nature gives all beings.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The self-realized spirit is merely a spirit emancipated from fear, judgement and knowing.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
I didn't want the clothes or the perfect shoes or the expensive anything. I didn't want to be draped in silk. All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
I want to feel like I'm making a difference in this world. And I want some time for living rather than just working. Life is for living, isn't it? It can't be all just for working
— Zack Love, The Doorman
The only person, who can influence your life is YOU and it's never too late to recognize your worth.
— M.H. Rakib, The Cavalier
People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying: ‘i am not too concerned with what i’m going to do. I am more interested in who i am becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
I would love to be loved for what I am, and not for what I have!
— Nehali Lalwani
One shouldn't forget his goal ever, whether he has to lose his personality on way to get it. Because to recognize aim and to achieve it, is the real life.
— M.H. Rakib
Life isn't about self realization
—  it's about self creation.
We are what we are. If you are different, it's because you are special. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
— John Inman, Paulie
America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.
— Woodrow Wilson
Desire to be thin grows bigger and bigger. As does my appetite.
— Rae Earl, My Madder Fatter Diary
Enlightenment is the ability to comprehend ourselves, it is the power to peer into our hearts and minds and reach that state of spiritual bliss, which may or may not lead us to salvation.
— Balroop Singh
To see your-self you must first be yourself, to be your-self you must first know yourself, and to know your-self you must first love your-self more than anything in the world."-Mark Miller
— Mark Miller
If you never try, you will never know what it means to succeed.
— Belle Ami
Know the true definition of yourself. That is essential.Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
For man, mind is the cause of bondage and mind is the cause of liberation. Mind absorbed in sense objects is the cause of bondage, and mind detached from the sense objects is the cause of liberation.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Bhagavad-Gita As It Is
My dear Arjuna, only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and can thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Bhagavad-Gita As It Is
The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father also.
— Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 Vols.
Because everybody has a conscience, whether or not we can be great beings is not determined merely by its presence in us . Instead, it is determined by the choice to acknowledge its presence and follow its lead
— Ilchi Lee
The honest to God truth is that I'm mad at myself. I should've known better.
— Miranda Kenneally, Racing Savannah
There is nothing like discovering your own secrets in someone else’s story. Those thoughts and feelings you believed were too ugly or strange or idealistic or desperate or whimsical or hungry or sad they had to be just you because there could be no other place for them, anywhere. Books that make you realize you’re not alone, you never were. Those are the ones I like best.
— Courtney Summers
The solitary speaks."One receives as a reward for much ennui , ill-humour and boredom, such as a solitude without friends, books, duties or passions must entail, one harvests those quarters of an hour of the deepest immersion in oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the most potent refreshing draught from the deepest well of his own being.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
For sense gratification, a man in the mode of passion wants some honor in society, or in the nation, and he wants to have a happy family, with nice children, wife and house. These are the products of the mode of passion. As long as one is hankering after these things, he has to work very hard. Therefore it is clearly stated here that he becomes associated with the fruits of his activities and thus becomes bound by such activities. In order to please his wife, children and society and to keep up his prestige, one has to work. Therefore the whole material world is more or less in the mode of passion.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Bhagavad-Gita As It Is
When you feel hatred towards your life, hate it. See how it will actually do something to your life.
— Ade Santi