Top 100 Being Ourselves Quotes
#1. Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which there is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.
Glen Cook
#2. Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.
Robert Graves
#3. We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves.
Mary E. DeMuth
#4. IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people.
Donald Miller
#5. Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror.
Antonio Porchia
#6. We weren't wrong for being ourselves; we were wrong for each other.
Renee Carlino
#7. To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans.
Miguel Ruiz
#8. There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves. And there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, feel, and say what is ours.
Erich Fromm
#9. The price we pay for being ourselves is worth it.
Eartha Kitt
#10. One bit in or out of focus makes the difference between our bodies being ourselves and our being part of a group. I want to melt the idea of specificity and blend individuality into the crowd.
Ross Bleckner
#11. She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.
Alexander McCall Smith
#12. Unless we know people well, we sit around with our words and our minds starched, afraid of being ourselves for fear of wrinkling them.
Budd Schulberg
#13. I think we were just coming out and being ourselves, instead of operating within boundaries that other people had created. We decided to do away with those boundaries.
Michael Giles
#15. Live at your highest potential-moment to moment to moment ... When do we feel most alive? When we're being ourselves-our highest selves.
Brian Johnson
#16. We all get a little tired of being ourselves sometimes. The answer is to reinvent yourself, but how do you do that and what is the cost?
Leos Carax
#17. For the third season, we do a sit around on one episode where we were in character and then we commented on one episode just being ourselves, so - not really. I was comfortable, though. I wasn't nervous.
Carlos Alazraqui
#18. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours.
Erich Fromm
#19. We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. This is the biggest assumption that humans make. And this is why we have a fear of being ourselves around others.
Miguel Ruiz
#20. Just being ourselves, feeling proud of what we are by God's grace, believing in our own efforts to be successful in whatever we do ... is real happiness
Sriveena Dhagavkar
#21. We have to stand up for what we believe in, even when we might not be popular for it. Honesty starts with being ourselves, authentic and true to who we are and what we believe in, and that may not always be popular, but it will always let you follow your dreams and your heart.
Tabatha Coffey
#22. I don't think it's about entertainment. I think it's about being ourselves.
Diane Sawyer
#23. We're just being ourselves and having fun playing baseball. The biggest thing is when people look at our team, they can see that we're having a lot of fun.
Johnny Damon
#24. It's about being ourselves, our real best selves, the women God made us to be. It's about reading the writing on our feminine souls - writing engraved there from the moment God formed us in our mothers' wombs - then living what that writing proclaims.
Emily Stimpson
#25. The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
Eric Hoffer
#26. Just by being ourselves we are borne toward a destiny far beyond anything we could imagine. It is enough to know that the being I nourish inside me is the same as the Being that suffuses every atom of the cosmos.
Deepak Chopra
#27. We can regret something that we did , we can regret something that we didn't do; but the only thing that we can not afford to regret is regretting being ourselves
Hisham Fawzi
#28. If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being.
Thomas Merton
#29. The fear of fat works ... because it's being manipulated in us to enforce class divisions, racisms, womyn-hatred. And we give it the room to work because it's so close to us, it's our own bodies, that we don't see it as coming from outside ourselves, we don't name it for the weapon it is.
Elana Dykewomon
#30. We listen to those whom we know to be of the same opinion as ourselves, and we call them wise for being of it; but we avoid such as differ from us.
Walter Savage Landor
#31. When we meditate and we are able to stop thought, we get a sense of being beyond the body. Our consciousness expands and we see ourselves as beings of light.
Frederick Lenz
#32. I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live with a
full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy
ourselves with our passion to escape the aloneness.
Jim Harrison
#33. We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.
William Shakespeare
#34. If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.
Madeleine L'Engle
#35. I think the truth is that finding ourselves brings more excitement and well-being than anything romance has to offer, and somewhere we know that.
Bell Hooks
#36. Being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us - including ourselves.
Arianna Huffington
#37. Feeling at home with ourselves and being able to create a spirit of place that nourishes us physically, emotionally and spiritually is a goal worthy of our highest priority.
Alexandra Stoddard
#38. Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.
Jeremy Collier
#39. We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.
Gwendolyn Brooks
#40. I think when it comes to women who write or who fancy ourselves 'hip downtown literati', there is a certain contempt for being overly sexual or really looking for boyfriends. We tend to be marginalized as some 'Sex & The City' Carrie Bradshaw chick-lit dummies who just want shoes and a ring.
Julie Klausner
#41. I have learned from my own pain is that God's plan for all of us is peace. Being a role model to peace, and spreading peace through being peaceful ourselves. It's about choosing peace instead of pain - this is the bottom line.
Doreen Virtue
#42. Surrendering to life offers some wonderful realizations. We learn we're capable of being in this dance, of working with whatever happens. We learn to trust ourselves and then others and, gradually, we learn that life itself can be trusted.
Margaret J. Wheatley
#43. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Ray Bradbury
#44. The World's a dangerous place. It doesn't matter where you are, your'e always at risk of being approached by people who have no scruples about attacking, destroying, killing. And we never learn how to defend ourselves. We're all in the hands of those powerful than us.
Paulo Coelho
#45. There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.
James Baldwin
#46. God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
Charles Caleb Colton
#47. Sometimes, we find ourselves as conservatives being angry when we should be joyful, finding ourselves being negative when we should be positive, because we have a positive message to send ... We ought to be the most compassionate people in the world.
Kevin Cramer
#48. Being true to ourselves doesn't make us people of integrity. Charles Manson was true to himself, and as a result, he rightly is spending the rest of his life in prison. Ultimately, being true to our Creator gives us the purest form of integrity.
John Wooden
#49. How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinising our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.
Ernst F. Schumacher
#50. Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it.
Gary Cox
#51. Sometimes we exclude things in ourselves in order to be like everybody else around us-our ethnicity, our social backgrounds, our ideas. What kind of world is it that will not allow me to be myself, and is it really good for me to be there? What part of me will die a slow death if I stay?
Joan D. Chittister
#52. When we are at peace with ourselves the total expression of that true peace includes our outer being; our body.
Bryant H. McGill
#53. If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone. We stop being a source of suffering to the world, and we become a reservoir of joy and freshness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#54. We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
Elisabeth Elliot
#55. At the end of it all, what flashes before our eyes won't be all the things we did that were bigger than ourselves; they'll be all the moments when we made a difference by being true to ourselves.
Conari Press
#56. If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?
Gaston Bachelard
#57. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#58. We make a space inside ourselves, so that being can speak.
Martin Heidegger
#59. The point here is what makes human beings different from other creatures is our ability to use language. We can use words to express ourselves in very eloquent and complex ways. We grow up telling and listening to stories. That's what turns us into the people we are.
Flemming Rose
#60. When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death. For nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.
Giordano Bruno
#61. Love is a living, breathing thing. There is no need to force it to grow in a particular direction. If we start by being easy and gentle with ourselves, we will find it is just there inside of us, solid and healing.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#62. We have to compete within ourselves relative to the determination it takes to be successful.
Nick Saban
#63. I remember the first time I went to Europe, I had someone take a picture of me there, so I could really see myself there. There's a sense of being outside yourself, and I think celebrity allows us that too, to be outside ourselves.
Jess Walter
#64. Deep within ourselves, we find the inner being, the inner source of love, which is our true nature.
Love is the only reality, because only love works.
Swami Dhyan Giten
#65. We do the right thing not to please people but because it's the only logically reasonable thing to do, as long as we are being honest with ourselves - even if we are the only ones.
Wangari Maathai
#66. Being good or being evil is not something that is inherent in our nature over which we have no control, rather we define ourselves by the choices we make, moment by moment, situation by situation. All it takes is an act of will to be the best that we can be.
Laurence Overmire
#67. Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.
Blaise Pascal
#68. We are stronger for the people who leave us, you know? Being able to live without them just shows how much better we are. No one can hold us back but ourselves, and I, for one, am proud of the person I am.
Toni Aleo
#69. We all have things inside ourselves we can't kill,' I say, not sure which part of me would be better off dead: this monster self, or the normal one who wants nothing more than a little place on a little planet with his friends, the one who will have to live with being a killer.
Holly Black
#70. But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)
Sheldon B. Kopp
#71. It is not being alone but being with ourselves that is the killer.
Richard Kalish
#72. To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#73. 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
#74. The fact is, for most of us, what happens to ourselves is so much more important than what happens to other people that the smallest mote in our own eye will prevent us from being unduly harrowed by someone else's beam.
Patricia Wentworth
#75. We write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice. But a tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses. You don't have to keep being the thing you have become. It is never too late.
Rachel Joyce
#76. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.
Maya Angelou
#77. To worship God in truth is to recognize Him for being who He is, and to recognize ourselves for what we are.
Brother Lawrence
#78. Sometimes we fall in love and end up losing ourselves. We allow ourselves to become different people. But we have choices, Lily. We can choose to find the person we used to be, the person we really are. Or we can continue on as this new being."
-Conall.
Chani Lynn Feener
#79. Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
Henrik Ibsen
#80. We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.
Thomas Berry
#81. For whatever reason, not all people are born with the particular gift of being able to express ourselves through music. And, believe me, it is a gift.
Billy Joel
#82. Quit being so hard on yourself. We are what we are; we love what we love. We don't need to justify it to anyone ... not even to ourselves.
Scott Lynch
#83. Humans are wired to want to share love, the essence of our being, with others. The more we close this area off by holding onto anger, frustrations, resentments and disappointments, the less we are able to love ourselves and others.
Antonia Hall
#84. Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
John Ortberg
#85. And that is what we should all strive for. Being able to look in the mirror and love ourselves for who we are and what we've done.
Jessica Scott
#86. A martial arts practice hall, a dojo, is a place you go to practice being the best you can be. But the true combat in a dojo is not between one person and another as most people believe it to be. The true combat in a martial arts practice hall is between the people within ourselves.
Michael Gerber
#87. People need to see that, far from being an obstacle, the world's diversity of languages, religions and traditions is a great treasure, affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others.
Youssou N'Dour
#88. We need to return to learning about the land by being on the land, or better, by being in the thick of it. That is the best way we can stay in touch with the fates of its creatures, its indigenous cultures, its earthbound wisdom. That is the best way we can be in touch with ourselves.
Gary Paul Nabhan
#89. We ought to step out of our old, hard casing. We think that we are one kind of people, when in fact we are always creating ourselves. We are not fixed. We are constantly becoming, constantly coming into being.
Ben Okri
#90. Being a healthy woman isn't about getting on a scale or measuring your waistline. We need to start focusing on what matters-on how we feel, and how we feel about ourselves.
Michelle Obama
#91. You know - we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God - ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.
Kurt Vonnegut
#92. In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
Edgar Allan Poe
#93. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.
Guy De Maupassant
#94. Forgetting wasn't the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn't the same as forgetting ... we were at our most miserable when we're doing it to ourselves.
Eleanor Brown
#95. In New Zealand I think we often take ourselves too seriously, and being able to laugh at yourself is necessary in life without being too precious.
Murray Mexted
#96. Billions of years ago you were a big bang. But now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off. And don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
Alan Watts
#97. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?
Joshua Foer
#98. Being graded for memorizing male accomplishments with the deep message that we can learn what others do but never do it ourselves.
Gloria Steinem
#99. I think that being a soul in flesh is really challenging and we should all give ourselves more credit.
S. Kelley Harrell
#100. One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn't come, good, I'll just sit here.
Maya Angelou
