Identity Quotes - Page 3

In her mind, the ground rumbled and split open revealing the edge into a dark abyss. The shadows were always calling to her. Laughing at her. The familiar strains of loneliness flared under their torment. Drawing in a deep breath, she screamed to the black, “You’re not allowed to hurt me and know it!” Her voice echoed off the earthen walls and whispered back, “Be free. Be fearless.

Jesikah Sundin

It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.

James Baldwin

Typical me--hurricane that leaves nothing but destruction.

Katie McGarry

In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being — a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say ‘Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,’ the ‘I’ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ‘I’ which does the pronouncing. The former ‘I’ is known to linguistic theory as the ‘subject of the enunciation’, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ‘I’, the one who speaks the sentence, is the ‘subject of the enunciating’, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two ‘I’s’ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The ‘subject of the enunciating’, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ‘I’ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot ‘mean’ and ‘be’ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ as: ‘I am not where I think, and I think where I am not.

Terry Eagleton

And what's beyond vastness? It shrinks...

Jasleen Kaur Gumber

A person's true identity can often be difficult to discern, even to themselves, causing one to question their character, their calling, their very existence. For most, time gives clarity, but for others, these questions remained unanswered for an identity can not be fully defined when it is a guarded secret.

Emily Thorne

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

Philip Zaleski

The hardest calling in our lives is to be truly ourselves.

J.R. Rim

It’s important to understand that at every point of opposition to who we are or to what God has called us to do, we are presented with the options of either conforming and giving in, or standing our ground and becoming stronger in who God has made us to be

Gabriel Wilson

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you?

Lionel Suggs

I figure the more people think I'm just mildly weird, the less likely they are to know how weird I really am.

Melanie Hooyenga

When I said, “I am my mother, but I’m not,” I was saying my path would be my own.

Terry Tempest Williams

And when you try to live there, to live in a place where you're betraying yourself over and over, not only do you grow to resent the hell out of it, and resent the hell out of whomever you're betraying and censoring yourself for, but the very idea of your self begins slowly and inexorably to erode. Until you realize one day out of the clear blue that you have no idea who your self is, anymore.

Ron Currie Jr.

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless--a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.

Haruki Murakami

Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.

Masamune Shirow

Walls get made, walls crumble, buildings get built, buildings collapse, memories get made, memories last.

Jill Telford

The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides.

Gayle Forman

Then he realized: 'I, indeed, am this creation; for I have poured it forth from myself.' In that way he became this creation. And verily, he who knows this becomes in this creation a creator.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing – to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos – of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings – in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, 'This is I!

Conrad Aiken

Though we rush ahead to save our time, we are only what we feel

Neil Young

The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’.

Joyce Carol Oates

When I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things...

René Descartes

When the rose opens its heart, you will smell the fragrance of its soul.

Jit Sharma

If originality is a “sense of novelty and freshness” then, in the act of constructing ourselves, originality is not the goal. We construct a self-portrait, relying on existing objects – books, quotes from authors and artists, images, art – that we are more than happy to show off to others for them to use as masturbation material or for the material by which they align themselves. This is the new action painting – the curational archive. The referential self portrait. The portrait of any other artist could be readily used to explain yourself, just reblog it and caption it with “same.” The past consistently becomes the present, not through linear time, but through the constant reconstruction and relabeling of it.

Gabby Bess

i have a body and I am grateful, as I find it to be a very useful instrument for expressing love, strength, flexibility, gracebut, I am not my body...

Kate Mullane Robertson

...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

Gabriel García Márquez

After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why.

David Levithan

Your self…is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread.

Tom Wolfe

We may take it that the world is undoubtedly itself [i.e., is indistinct from itself], but, in any attempt to see itself, as an object, it must, equally, undoubtedly act so as to make itself distinct from and therefore false to itself.In this sense, in respect to its own information, the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us.

G. Spencer Brown

You are the decision you make. The things you do. The people you love and who love you. They're the things that really make you who you are.

Katie Dale

By identifying with a particular name that belongs to a particular body and mind, the self begins the process of creating a separate identity. Add in a complex jumble of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, along with some selective and often painful memories with which to create a past to identify with, as well as the raw emotional energy to hold it all together, and before you know it, you've got a very convincing - though divided - self.

Adyashanti

Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl

Miranda July

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth

Oscar Wilde

Time alone helps us to remember who we are.

Fennel Hudson

When I wake from my nightmaresI’m more afraid of the breath in my lungs than whatever might be chasing me.

Miriam Joy

This is me today, but take heed; it is not the same me as yesterday, and it will not be the same me tomorrow.

Richelle E. Goodrich

An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face.

George Orwell

I keep on dreaming, but to find freedom, one must first search inwards.

Fennel Hudson

He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

John Williams

Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves.

Erich Fromm

Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.

Fernando Pessoa

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image. I think this protagonist, this self, often recognizes that it is a fictional construct, but it also recognizes that thinking of itself as such might cause it to disintegrate.

Mohsin Hamid

I do not know which of us has written this page.

Jorge Luis Borges

Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place.

Sarah Kay

It's difficult to become someone you don't know at all. It's difficult, indeed, to become yourself.

Michal Coret

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.Was the last face the real one?No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn’t know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.)

Milan Kundera

If I don’t know who I am apart from everyone else, I probably need to spend some time apart from everyone else.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Is it possible to cause so much misery to another human being, simply by being oneself? she wondered, feeling a reflection of that misery. No help for it; she must continue to be herself.

Amy Witting

An insipid voice message or an incongruent emergence from the “other” world may disrupt our whole thinking system. If we are not able to deal with the fragmentation of our self and assess the deconstruction of our identity, a corny incident could easily capsize our being. A misinterpretation of facts and expectations may perturb our awareness and unsettle our perception. When “I” and “me” don’t get along very well, the road to oneness may be very often bumpy. (“Alors, tout a basculé”)

Erik Pevernagie

We build a self-image from stored memories including a swarm of physical and social interactions, evocative emotions, and other associative experiences. Selfhood also comes from the language, symbols, and artifacts, which potent combinations create cultural beliefs. We build a self upon real as well as imaginary experiences. A person’s rational and irrational beliefs forge a sense of self. The books that we read, the music we listen to, the films we watch, and what church or other social gatherings we attend constitute meaningful activities that congeal and work together to shape our sense of identity. Cultural determinants drive how we work, play, worship, and raise our children. Culture has its own sources of reinforcement that can influence members of society to adopt an interdependent, communal sense of self, or an independent, individualistic sense of self. Culture is not fate, but none of us is immune from the great octopus of culture; its tentacles touch us every direction that we turn. Our self-identity is subtlety influenced by the prevailing political-social culture as well as affected by our perceived social status, economic or otherwise.

Kilroy J. Oldster

To realise one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.

Oscar Wilde

Be confident enough to show your true self to the world.

Fennel Hudson

A person has to be comfortable in his or her own skin.

Fennel Hudson

There’s no point pretending to be someone or something we’re not.

Fennel Hudson

We should be authentic: the ‘real deal’. Neither a clone nor mimic be.

Fennel Hudson

Till mirrors were Invented, Face was not You, Not Even part of Your Performance.

Vineet Raj Kapoor

I am not and autobiographical writer--one can't be without a solid and explicable self--and read all autobiographical writers with the same curiosity. What kind of life permits a person the right to become his own subject?

Yiyun Li

She was tired of everyone deciding her life for her. She was ready to figure out who she really was--not what anyone else told her to be.

Marissa Meyer

There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I am such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.

L.M. Montgomery

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 … 12 Next

Identity Quotes - Page 3

Related Topics