c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
To the man of science, on his unassuming and laborious travels, which must often enough be journeys through the desert, there appear those glittering mirages called 'philosophical systems'; with bewitching deceptive power they show the solution of all enigmas and the freshest draught of the true water of life to be near at hand; his heart rejoices, and it seems to the weary traveller that his lips already touch the goal of all the perseverance and sorrows of the scientific life... Other natures again, may well grow exceedingly ill-humoured and curse the salty taste which these apparitions leave behind in the mouth and from which arises a raging thirst – without one having been brought so much as a step nearer to any kind of spring.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Unzip your life right now, air out the putrid and bleach the infection, then invite your childhood dreams back, beckon the best of you and breathe deeper than you have in a very long time. Believe in the holdings of your heart. You can become anyone and anything your heart desires once you clear the clutter and stuff yourself with positive power and intentions.
— Toni Sorenson
If you are going to be a doubter, I don't need your negative energy.
— Stephen Richards
TAKE ACTION! Wanting is not enough; Act upon your goals! If somebody was watching your day-to-day behavior, would they be able to see what you’re working towards; what your goals are? If the answer is no, FIX IT!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Don’t make excuses; rather, find support and resources to make good things happen for yourself, your family, your businesses, your community, and the world you live in.
— Anna   Stevens, Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!
Many surround themselves with luminaries, but in so doing they dull their own sparkle. If you want to shine bright, look to the heavens and see how the brightest star always stands apart from those lesser shining stars.
— Stephen Richards
All the answers to your questions about what your goals can and should be lie within, so does your power to accomplish those goals.
— Anna   Stevens, Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!
When the zone calls, you must listen. You never know how long being in the zone lasts.It is a cardinal rule - you must take advantage of every second that you are in the zone.
— JohnA Passaro, In the Zone and Other Sports Essays
Your life is a reflection of how effectively you balance potential and kinetic energy.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Managers’ responsibility is to ensure that people deliver the expected results, which are the company’s strategy. The company’s strategy, in turn, determines its competitive advantage. So, if a manager does a poor job of motivating employees’ productivity, the enterprise is a weak competitor. 
— Anna   Stevens, Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!
I recommend that you focus on both substance and process of your goals. I believe that both are equally important: by setting a high-quality SMART goal you will enable yourself to be conscious and your actions will carry more meaning; meanwhile, it is the execution of the SMART goals strategy that separates achievers from the rest of the people.
— Anna   Stevens, Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!
Success isn't something you have, it's something you do. Don't be fooled into taking shortcuts, they always lead to a dead-end. Instead, establish a goal, make a plan, and take purposeful action. Those who experience success are those who live it; those who earn it.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Man needs what's worst in him in order to achieve what's best in him.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
Those who speak most of health, have it. Those who speak most of wealth, have it. Those who speak most of joy, have it. The opposite also holds true. So which would you rather have?
— Stephen Richards
By fully experiencing and going beyond an emotional block - through the layers of doubt and fear - you experience the emotion of who you truly are.
— Stephen Richards
You have two voices, one that only you hear, and another that you speak out loud with, so others hear you. Regardless of what you actually say with your mouth, what matters is what your inner voice says, for this is the one you listen to the most.
— Stephen Richards
To control your life, control your mind. To control your mind, control your breath.
— Stephen Richards
No matter what your wishes, they are not crazy so long as they are not crazy to you!
— Stephen Richards
Make the goal huge and you cannot miss!
— Stephen Richards
Excuses are a time thief. Have a goal, accept responsibility, and take action!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Whatever you do in your life, always go the distance.
— Ken Norton
Often success goes hand-in-hand with the sum total of sexual activity in your life.
— Stephen Richards
You have a right to feel the universe is willing to provide you with blessings, but not to the point that it cannot do without you.
— Stephen Richards
You put yourself where you are, and if you find yourself unsatisfied with how you are, then get yourself out of it.
— Stephen Richards
Your life is in your hands. Only YOU have the capacity to turn it into a rosy path or a thorn filled one. Increase your vibrational output with Cosmic Ordering and your future will be rosy.
— Stephen Richards
Do not avoid doing what you love because you fear that it will only result in poverty or lack. If you fear this, then this is exactly what will happen.
— Stephen Richards
The universe is infinite, and the experiences and opportunities available to us are likewise.
— Stephen Richards
I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.
— Cicely Tyson
Armed with positive thoughts, it becomes easier to focus on your goals, while the opposite also holds true.
— Stephen Richards
Do not constantly question why your desires have not manifested, although you should keep a vibrational connection to them.
— Stephen Richards
Harnessing the unique sex energy that can only arise through sexual expression can awaken multidimensional awareness and provide you with your desired goal.
— Stephen Richards
My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn’t feel like work, nor should today’s younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to “dumb down” the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent’s Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling.
— H.B. Bolton
If you're alive, kick into drive. Chase whimsies. See if you can turn dreams into a way to make a living, if not an entire way of life.
— Kevin Smith, Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
the goal is to keep yourself moving, remember? don't linger. don't hover. you are not going to stay.
— Terra Elan McVoy, After the Kiss
Give up your dreams
—  you'll accomplish more without sleep.
You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined,that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.
— Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
It’s called an ‘accomplishment’, not an ‘intent-ishment’. You’ve got to BE it to SEE it. NO MORE EXCUSES - Decide what you want, create a plan, and get your ass out there!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Remember this—the journey is part of the dream.  Whatever it is you're chasing, so long as you are actively moving in the right direction, the dream is coming true.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Achieving a goal is nothing. The getting there is everything.
— Jules Michelet
Between here and there is a journey illuminated by the rising and setting of a radiant sun. Don't miss its splendor in your all-fired hurry to cross the finish line.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Deciding to commit yourself to long term results rather than short term fixes is as important as any decision you'll make in your lifetime.
— Anthony Robbins
Thinking about working out burns 0 calories, 0 percentage of fat and accomplishes 0 goals!
— Gwen Ro
I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of "Uncle Tom's Children". When the review of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awful naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.
— Richard Wright, Bigger Thomas
The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.
— Max McKeown, The Strategy Book
It matters not what goal you seek Its secret here reposesYou've got to dig from week to week To get Results or Roses.
— Edgar A. Guest
At this age, all we need to do is to "WAIT" in our love life.Set your priorities, Endeavor your goals!
— Marielle Arias Cleofe
Anytime you announce your dream; two things happen, it's either it motivates you to get it done or the feeling of accomplishment sets in and discourages you from pursuing it
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Don't throw away another day! No more procrastinating! Only YOU can make it happen. So, UN-ASS the couch and make it happen!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Do not ask, "Is is possible?" rather, "Is is worth what it will require of me to make it happen?
— Toni Sorenson
Any activity where you let go of fears and doubts and inertia, and move toward a goal you desire brings, if not the goal itself (which may or may not be available to you) but brings you a life full of adventure, dedication, excitement and fulfillment – in other words – satisfaction and happiness.
— Martin Gover, The Simplest Book Ever on Life Attitude and Happiness
As you give to fund God's needs, are you forced to trust Him to provide for yours? That's what a growing faith is about. And over the long haul, it's not enough just to commit to a percentage. Growth means reviewing your giving goals and occasionally increasing the percentage you give.
— Andy Stanley, Fields Of Gold
Do you have all that you desire? The health, the home, the career or the relationship? Look to where you're investing your time the most, is it dedicated to achieving those desires?
— Rob Liano
Positive energy is your priceless life force. Protect it. Don't allow people to draw from your reserves; select friends who recharge your energies . . . I'm not asking you to cut people out of your life, but I am asking you to invest your time with people who will push you to be your best. Winners love to see other people win.
— Chalene Johnson, PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve!
People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.
— Zig Ziglar
While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
Aim at a high mark and you'll hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second time. Maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect.
— Annie Oakley
Goals are my north star.  My compass.  The map that guides me along the road I wish to travel.  Goals are motivations with wind in their sails—they carry me forward despite the storms.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
An average person with average talent, ambition and education can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.
— Brian Tracy
The funny thing about an impossibility is that it tends to be a magnet for those who would prove it otherwise.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Every step towards your dream today is a step away from your regret tomorrow.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Tell me your story and I will get back your life.
— Stephen Richards
Treat yourself like a fat person with aches and pains and a suitcase full of excuses, and good luck--you'll stay exactly where you are. Train like an athlete and, though you may not look like one now, you will become one.
— Chalene Johnson, PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve!
Successful people do what others know they should do but will not. To become a success, or just be *more* successful, you will do what average, less-motivated people will not.
— Chalene Johnson, PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve!
Willful blindness sees no end of damage done.
— Stephen Richards
A tenacious grip on our own ideals, irrespective of hurdles, would propel us towards self-actualization!
— Deeba Salim Irfan
Entrust your dreams and goals to people who will cheer you on and inspire you, who will tell you what you need to hear rather than what you want to hear so you can move forward and fast track.
— Rachael Bermingham
With sticky thinking you can become unstuck!
— Stephen Richards
It's Up to You To Get Your Dreams and Goals Moving
— Brenda Johnson Padgitt
I want to make a difference, I want to make a change, inspire a revolution, to create, reinvent, and rearrange.
— Meagan Earls
Perfection is too high a goal to strive for. Sometimes working hard bringsmore satisfaction in the end.
— Megan Hart, Tempted
Everyone lives a self-centered life...whether its trivial like what's for breakfast, or more ambitious, like achieving some lofty goal, a person is constantly on her own mind.
— T.M. Goeglein, Cold Fury
Aim at the ground, you'll never miss.
— Kristine Thomas
If you want to make dough, do a bun dance.
— Stephen Richards
Your goals and dreams will never happen if you don't Sow Labor Into Time
— Brenda Johnson Padgitt
There are several paths to success
—  We are given multiple opportunities to achieve our potential throughout our lives. Some get there a little faster than others. But one thing is for sure
It is a rare goal that has only one path.
— Carma Spence
After a few months of talking with people and observing them, I realized that the traits of the successful fitness enthusiasts had everything in common with those of the high achievers I had spent years studying in business.
— Chalene Johnson, PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve!
Treat yourself like a fast person with aches and pains and a suitcase full of excuses, and good luck--you'll stay exactly where you are. Train like an athlete and, though you may not look like one now, you will become one." --Push: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, p. 214
— Chalene Johnson, PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve!
A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.
— Masaru Emoto, Secret Life of Water
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
— Edward Everett Hale
We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
— Alan W. Watts
Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.
— Ian McEwan, Atonement
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
— André Berthiaume
I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.
— Anaïs Nin
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
— Alan W. Watts
I stop fighting my inner demons. We're on the same side now. T-shirt
— Darynda Jones, Second Grave on the Left
Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.
— Robert Hand
I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.
— Drew Barrymore
I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The deeper I go into myself the more I realize that I am my own enemy.
— Floriano Martins
I feel the need to endanger myself every so often.
— Tim Daly
You're a poem?' I repeated.She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose whose world was swallowed by the sea.''Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?''What's your name?''Enn.''So you are Enn,' she said. 'And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time?
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
The woman I was yesterday, introduced me to the woman I am today; which makes me very excited about meeting the woman I will become tomorrow. 
— Poetic Evolution
Don’t be surprised by your greatness. Be surprised that no one expected it.
— Rebecca Maizel, Infinite Days
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
— Alan W. Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
There's always the option of deciding for yourself who you are and what you'll become.
— Jodi Meadows, Incarnate
For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.
— Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even thoseyou love.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
[T]hou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.
— Robert  Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
— Alan W. Watts
What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.
— Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
— W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.
— James     Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
Can't get away from your own self.
— Holly Black, Lucinda's Secret
Wherever you go, there you are.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
— Alan W. Watts
To be me is to be different...
— Robert Fanney, Dreams of the Ringed Vale
I’ve always been a slow learner in some areas of my life.mostly the areas known as myself. Or maybe I should say ‘selves.’because the fact is, I’ve never, even as a child, felt I’m only one self, only one person. I’ve always felt I’m quite a few more than one. For example, there’s my jokey self, there’s my morose and fed-up self,there’s my lewd and disgusting self. There’s my clever-clogs self, and my fading-violet-who-cant-make-up-her-mind-about-anything self. There’s my untidy-clothes-everywhere-all-over-my-room self, and my manically tidy self when I want my room to be minimalist and Zen to the nth degree. There’s my confidant, arrogant self and my polite and reasonable and good listener self. There’s my self-righteous self and my wickedly bad self, my flaky self and my bsentimental self. There are selfs I like and selfs I don’t like.there’s my little-girl selfnwhonlikes to play silly games and there’s my old-woman self when I’m quite sure I’m eighty and edging towards geriatric.The self I show in action at any moment depends on where I am, who I’m with, the circumstances of the situation and the mood I’m in.
— Aidan Chambers, This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
I protect myself by refusing to know myself.
— Floriano Martins
We all have bad things inside us, and we all choose either to give in to those bad things or to fight them.
— Kristin Cast, Untamed
Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face. This is your true self, Tessa. This power is who you are. Whoever loves you now--and you must also love yourself--will love the truth of you.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us
— André Gide, Strait is the Gate and The Vatican Cellars
He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Who you are is always right.
— Ming-Dao Deng, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony
My mother always told meNo monster lived beneath my bed,But she had failed to warn meIt laid on top of it instead.
— Erin Hanson
She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Like vanishing dew,a passing apparitionor the sudden flashof lightning -- already gone --thus should one regard one's self.
— Ikkyu
Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.
— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you’re just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless. (418)
— Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather, the pang of creation. The desire he felt, watching Joe, was unquestionably physical, but in the sense that Sammy wanted to inhabit the body of his cousin, not possess it. It was, in part, a longing--common enough among the inventors of heroes--to be someone else; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campaigns that always ran afoul of his perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved. Joe Kavalier had an air of competence, of faith in his own abilities, that Sammy, by means of constant effort over the whole of his life, had finally learned only to fake. 
— Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.
— Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life
Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long... long before we know how to get there.
— Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides
Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.It is the one true and perfect symbol of the uni
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
We labor under so many illusions about ourselves until we're stripped bare. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. You, distilled. You, boiled down like a sauce. But it's you as you always were, deep down inside.
— Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
I can be somebody's and still be my own.
— Shel Silverstein
She wondered why they didn't understand that their true selfs were good enough, and if they weren't, then the someones they weren't good enough for, were really the ones not good enough.
— Lynsay Sands
The erotic state – again, a mixture of concentration and spontaneity – is a hypnoidal state, probably the most powerful kind that we are capable of experiencing, and it is in this condition that unexpected regions of the self are revealed, as the majority of people know from experience.
— Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense
What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.
— David Malouf, An Imaginary Life
I wish I wasn't an imperial highness or an ex-grand duchess. I'm sick of people doing things to me because of what I am. Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-of-the-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant. I want people to look and see me, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am.
— Sarah  Miller, The Lost Crown
It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.
— Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that?
— Aidan Chambers, This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place.In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal withpeople, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you neednothing. Be what you are--conscious being--and don't stray away fromyourself.
— Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.
— Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves
Life is a valuable and unique opportunityto discover who you are.But it seems as soon as you nearanswering that age-old question,something unexpected always happensto alter your course.And who it is you thought you weresuddenly changes.Then comes the frustrating realizationthat no matter how long life endures,no matter how many experiencesare muddled through in this existence,you may never really be ableto answer the question....Who am I? Because the answer, like the seasons,constantly, subtly, inevitably changes.And who it is you are today,is not the same person you will be tomorrow.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Eena, The Dawn and Rescue
I said just let me try one more time and she said, "THAT'S ENOUGH, ISABEL," again, and she could just say it over and over and it would never get through my thick skull because I'm always wanting and wanting because nothing is ever enough you are never enough I am never enough I am never enough I AM NEVER ENOUGH.
— Amy Reed, Crazy
I am... me. No matter what I say or do, I'm still me. That 's what Satozuki told me once. The things I feel, the things I do... Being a vampire, Being a man, being betrayed by my mother... when all those things come together, they make up "me." But none of these things taken separately. I'm just me.
— Tomu Ohmi, Midnight Secretary, Vol. 05
Don't try to tell me what I am because I know what I am not
— Amit Abraham, Personality Development Through Positive Thinking
How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?... I never feel the four walls around the substance of the self, the core. I feel only space. Illimitable space.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
— Alain de Botton
For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed
— Peter Sellers
We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.
— Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism
This accidentalmeeting of possibilitiescalls itself I.I ask: what am I doing here?And, at once, this Ibecomes unreal.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.
— Sigmund Freud
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It *is*--is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.To be nothing in the self-effacement of humility, yet, for the sake of the task, to embody its whole weight and importance in your earing, as the one who has been called to undertake it. To give to people, works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute, and to take, simply and freely, what belongs to it by reason of its identity. Praise and blame, the winds of success and adversity, blow over such a life without leaving a trace or upsetting its balance.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
Who are you?'I didn't understand the question.I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.
— Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
Now comes the hour to choose between being acceptable to others or being acceptable to one's own self, for we must kill our true selves off in order to survive.
— Morrissey, Autobiography
True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
The question of what we are can only be answered by ourselves. We each decide what we are by the life choices we make. How we were made, who are parents are, where we are from, the color of our skin, who we choose to love, all those things do not define us. Our actions define us, and will keep defining us until even after death.
— P.C. Cast, Destined
There comes a time when all that remains for us to do is to surrender to the idiosyncrasies of our nature.
— Floriano Martins
I myself am an absolute abyss.
— Antonin Artaud
There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity
—  I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.
Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.
— Tanith Lee, Wolf Queen
Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Our thinking will automatically improve when we remember the words of Paul: 'know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwelleth in you?
— Thomas S. Monson, Pathways To Perfection: Discourses Of Thomas S. Monson
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
— Edward Everett Hale
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight
— Marguerite Duras
Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
— Henry Fielding
Neither you, nor me, are "just vampires." Being vampires is just a part of what we are. There is no need to feel bound and chained by it.
— Tomu Ohmi, Midnight Secretary, Vol. 05
We must not be anything other than what we are.
— Maaza Mengiste, Beneath the Lion's Gaze
I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.
— Charlotte Eriksson
[O]ur own bodies are changing every second. Yet we take the body to be our Self; and, speaking in terms of it, we say, “I am hungry” or “I am lame”; “I am black” or “I am white.” These are all just the conditions of the body. We touch the truth when we say, “My body aches,” implying the body belongs to us and that therefore we are not that. (87)
— Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras
To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.
— Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
afflictions are classed as peripheral mental factors and are not themselves any of the six main minds [eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mental consciousnesses]. however, when any of the afflicting mental factors becomes manifest, a main mind [a mental consciousness] comes under its influence, goes wherever the affliction leads it, and 'accumulates' a bad action.there are a great many different kinds of afflictions, but the chief of them are desire, hatred, pride, wrong view and so forth. of these, desire and hatred are chief. because of an initial attachment to oneself, hatred arises when something undesirable occurs. further, through being attached to oneself the pride that holds one to be superior arises, and similarly when one has no knowledge of something, a wrong view that holds the object of this knowledge to be non-existent arises.how do self-attachment and so forth arise in such great force? because of beginningless conditioning, the mind tightly holds to 'i, i' even in dreams, and through the power of this conception, self-attachment and so forth occur. this false conception of 'i' arises because of one's lack of knowledge concerning the mode of existence of things. the fact that all objects are empty of inherent existence is obscured and one conceives things to exist inherently; the strong conception of 'i' derives from this. therefore, the conception that phenomena inherently exist is the afflicting ignorance that is the ultimate root of all afflictions.
— Dalai Lama XIV
Markings in dry clay disappearOnly when the clay is soft again.Scars upon the self disappearOnly when one becomes soft within.
— Ming-Dao Deng
Owing to ignorance of the rope the rope appears to be a snake; owing to ignorance of the Self the transient state arises of the individualized, limited, phenomenal aspect of the Self.
— Guru Nanak
Each of us is several, is man, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways.
— Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
No aacomplishments are important than self realization of self satisfaction.
— Santosh Kalwar
My life is one long obstacle course with me as the chief obstacle.
— Jack Paar
There's more to me than you see, another me down inside somewhere, full of hate, ready to hurt, cut, smash, or if maybe there's no Other and there's just me alone, then I'm not the person I thought I was, I'm something twisted and terrible, terrible.
— Dean Koontz, False Memory
Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people," I say. "Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time.
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we really are.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, What are You Doing with Your Life: Teen Books on Living Volume 1
You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.Otherwise, cede your gavel.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
I wanted to stay... me.
— Kelly Keaton, A Beautiful Evil
Self is a sea boundless and measureless.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The Self says ‘I AM’–as in the very grand sayings of Christ, especially in the Gospel of John, in which he says in the state of onenenss with Yahweh (which in Hebrew means ‘I AM’), I AM is the way and the truth and the life–but the ego says ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that,’ thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness. (62)
— Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.
— Marcel Proust, Time Regained
We must realize that we are all, like Dr. Faust, ready to accept the devil's inducements. The devil is in each one of us in the form of an ego that promises the fulfillment of desire on condition that we become subservient to its striving to dominate. The domination of the personality by the ego is a diabolical perversion of the nature of man. The ego was never intended to be the master of the body, but its loyal and obedient servant. The body, as opposed to the ego, desires pleasure, not power. Bodily pleasure is the source from which all our good feelings and good thinking stems. If the bodily pleasure of an individual is destroyed, he becomes an angry, frustrated, and hateful person. His thinking becomes distorted, and his creative potential is lost. He develops self-destructive attitudes.
— Alexander Lowen, Pleasure
I am afraid of darkness... even though it knows me it loves me.
— Ray Fawkes, One Soul
The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates) ...me. (Pause.)
— Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape & Embers
I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.
— Mary MacLane, The Story of Mary Maclane & Other Writings
When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.
— Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
I'm quite aware of my differences. I wouldn't classify them as weird
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
I know about me. I am the moons sister, a tidal child stranded on land. The sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent in my blood.
— Keri Hulme