…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...

Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance. Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities...

It is to geometry that we owe in some sort the source of this discovery [of beryllium]; it is that [science] that furnished the first idea of it, and we may say that without it...

Frightened that you’ll be overcome by yourself? That a gentle monster inside of you might take over and never let go?

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

(…) the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes...

We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our...

…tethered to the ground by quotidian conversation…. the window rosy with anemic November light.

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

You are not your illness. You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is part of the battle.

The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.

When you are clearly-defined, deliberate with intention and operating at your highest level, your brilliance cannot be hidden, diminished or overshadowed.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes...

My mother said the bizarre name Raccoona had surely been inspired, at least on a subliminal level, by the masks raccoons don’t wear but simply have – the ones given them by nature….. [S]he pointed...

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went...

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, ‘What’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?'” ‘The way I want...

You get olderand you are a whole mess of things,new thoughts, sorry feelings,big plans, enormous doubts,goling along hoping and getting disappointed,over and over again,no wonder I don’t recognizemy little crayon picture.It appears to be meand...

The ultimate barrier against love is the barrier of the constructed self.

He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his...

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny….To work out our identity in God.

I have forsaken her for a place I will never belong, but will always remain under her spell, forever to be, a child of my motherland.

the essential feature of the Dissociative Disorders is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity,or perception

The easiest way to gain someone’s trust is to deserve it. This should be pretty easy, assuming you’re just being you and being real. Minimal effort too.

The StrangerLooking as I’ve looked before, straight down the heartof the street to the riverwalking the rivers of the avenuesfeeling the shudder of the caves beneath the asphaltwatching the lights turn on in the towerswalking...

It’s some twisted, limited, grocery-store mentality, where people have to be dairy products or vegetables or frozen foods for us to be able to understand them and feel safe. Maybe we’ve just become such mega-consumers...

run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token…run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your...

exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.

We tend to view ourselves as this, lying in contradiction with everything that is not ourselves, that.

Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.

What’s burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It’s a hundred generations removed from anything...

Atheism tells him what he isn’t, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is.

Sometimes we fight who we are, struggling against ourselves and our natures. But we must learn to accept who we are and appreciate who we become. We must love ourselves for what and who we...

For my relationships with men to change, I needed to change my relationship to myself as a woman.

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.

We are what we are…

How would I know which one I was?

I want to make the choice that gives an accurate impression of who I am; and who I am is someone who wants to be ethical, evolved, yet not at all an oil pan for...

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…

Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can’t define your identity.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here its like I’m someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I...

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.

Naming can satisfy a need, it can shorten a conversation that otherwise might go on for hours.

Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population...

Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop...

Cine sunt eu? Nici măcar o umbră…

Even I don’t know myself… In fact, I don’t know if I really have a self at all, as I’m constantly playing different roles and pretending – not so much on stage as in real...

I miss my old life

It still has its identity. It’s still here intact. We just don’t have the facility opened.

I don’t know who I am. And I don’t think people ever will know who they are. We have to be humble enough to learn to live with this mysterious question. Who am I? So,...

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness...