Find Oneself Quotes

#1. If you can sit at set of sun And count the deeds that you have done And counting find oneself-denying act, one word That eased the heart of him that heard. One glance most kind, Which fell like sunshine where he went, Then you may count that day well spent.

Robert Browning

#2. Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.

Lauren Willig

#3. I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek oneself in other people, in characters.

John Cazale

#4. The loneliest place that one could ever find oneself is in a place of not being comfortable in one's own skin

Marcelle Hinkson

#5. Nothing is more difficult and nothing requires more character than to find oneself in open opposition to ones time (and those one loves) and to say loudly: No!

Kurt Tucholsky

#6. Besides, a new decade is a chance to find oneself at the beginning of things. Oh, life! What a sweet little Etch A Sketch of time you are!

Sloane Crosley

#7. The problem with being young and in a singular place is that one assumes that one will inevitably find oneself in an equally foreign and exotic location at some later point in life. But this is rarely true.

Hanya Yanagihara

#8. To think at its best is to find oneself carried down the current of necessity.

Brand Blanshard

#9. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.

Maggie Nelson

#10. One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine ... who one is and wants to be.

May Sarton

#11. I sometimes astonish my patients by telling them that it is far more important that they should be able to lose themselves than that they should be able to find themselves. For it is only in losing oneself that one does find oneself.

Theodore Dalrymple

#12. The punishment for acting helpless is to find oneself at the mercy of others.

Marty Rubin

#13. To find oneself living in an age of doubt is not such a curse. There is a kind of reverence in undertaking the quest for truth, even before the first scrap has been found.

Deepak Chopra

#14. To be away from home and yet find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world.

Charles Baudelaire

#15. Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless.

Jacques Lacan

#16. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in it's focus. To find oneself trapped in any one bead, no matter what it's hue, can be deadly.

Maggie Nelson

#17. The true sign of a robust and mature life rests in how many times that life has been knocked down, for to be incessantly knocked down and yet find oneself still standing means that someone had the resolve to get up that many times plus one.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#18. It is a solemn thing to find oneself drawn out in prayer which knows no relief till the soul it is burdened with is born. It is no less solemn afterwards, until Christ is formed in them.

Amy Carmichael

#19. No matter what kind of difficult situation one may find oneself in, some opening, some opportunity to fight one's way out, can always be found. What's most important is to hold fast to Hope, to face the future with courage.

Daisaku Ikeda

#20. Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply because one lacked the courage to say no.

Alexander McCall Smith

#21. Odd, some might think. Why someone would need to travel so far to find oneself. Surely a look in the mirror would suffice, and wouldn't that be cheaper too? But the mirror lies, and the eyes that do the looking conspire too.

Farish A. Noor

#22. To have one man's nut lay against another man's is a most awkward position to find oneself.

Jason R. Koivu

#23. What a drug this little book is; to imbibe it is to find oneself presuming his process. I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself. It is not mere envy but a delusional quickening in the blood.

Patti Smith

#24. We can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

Elizabeth Bowen

#25. To be faced with danger and find oneself fearless was thrilling.

Kate Morton

#26. And it seemed to him then that every human was always looking for himself, in bars, in railway trains, in offices, in mirrors, in love, especially in love, for the self of him that is there, someplace, in every other human. Love was not to give oneself, but find oneself, describe oneself.

James Jones

#27. Mankind is notoriously too dense to read the signs that God sends from time to time. We require drums to be beaten into our ears, before we should wake from our trance and hear the warning and see that to lose oneself in all, is the only way to find oneself.

Mahatma Gandhi

#28. The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love's primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.

Maggie Nelson

#29. To be an ignorant man, to posses nothing but a fragile word, to find oneself as if relying upon darkness and nothingness: that is the position from which one must be constantly setting out.

Jean Starobinski

#30. If one completes the journey to one's own heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else.

Thomas Keating

#31. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#32. Reunions are always fraught with awkward tensions - the necessity to account for oneself; the attempt to find, through memories, an ember of the old emotions ...

Anita Shreve

#33. To find truth completely is to realize oneself and one's destiny, i.e. to become perfect.

Mahatma Gandhi

#34. The greatest discovery is to find a hero within oneself that will choose life over death; and fight for hope through despair to possess the will to live.

Ellen J. Barrier

#35. Why can't life be like this? Human beings in all their magnificence. Working to find that moment of pride. That one second of excellence at being alive...The feeling of belonging not just to oneself but to the entire universe.

Ron Jones

#36. When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one's spiritual realization one will find that He who resides in one's heart, resides in the hearts of others as well - the oppressed, the persecuted, the untouchable, and the outcast.

Sarada Devi

#37. Today, valor and courage are hard to find. People are fickle, angry, resentful and selfish. It stops them from having courage and fighting for something larger than oneself.

C. Gockel

#38. What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.

Andre Breton

#39. Find comfort in questioning yourself.

Bryant McGill

#40. This is where we can find the greatest relief and joy everyday: falling under thought, anxiety, worry and all forms of me, into stillness; losing oneself in compelling engagements that transcend ambition, strategy, self-gain and self-consciousness.

Darrell Calkins

#41. To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.

Karen Horney

#42. Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

Lois McMaster Bujold

#43. If there was a common, even official form of killing oneself, suicide would be much easier and much more frequent. But since to be done with it all we must find our own way, we waste so much time meditating on trifles that we forget what is essential.

Emil Cioran

#44. For one can never really be helped by another; one must find the strength to help oneself.

Irvin D. Yalom

#45. Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him.

Timothy Keller

#46. The world was an awfully large place and it wasn't easy to find a person who'd gone missing sixty years earlier, even if that person was oneself.

Kate Morton

#47. I find that being oneself is an excellent choice, as everyone else is already taken.

April White

#48. To find out who you are is like putting yourself on a psychiatric couch, but you have nobody to help you. Really it isn't easy. I was talking with my nephew this morning and he gave me one of the best quotes I've heard in years 'Personal style is curiosity about oneself.'

Iris Apfel

#49. Mutual transformation is rare, as good things are. In my view, a person should live as they wish until they find someone they want to be faithful to. After all, as you say, one can't suck oneself off.

Hanif Kureishi

#50. We have within ourselves as a species, to find the beauty in everything. And once we master it, we will then be some of the gentlest creatures that ever evolved.

Tom Althouse

#51. I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?

Everett Ruess

#52. Your spiritual path isn't always just something you find, you started it the moment you took your first breath, and ever since you're been getting closer and closer to remembering who you truly are!

Martin R. Lemieux

#53. One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces.

Liv Ullmann

#54. A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing - not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.

Michael Ondaatje

#55. I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life - achieving a sense of peace within oneself.

Oliver Sacks

#56. There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

Seneca The Younger

#57. Which is to say that we all have dragons to slay in life. This one is mine. I hope that doing so will provide a model to others on how to find the bravery to be true to oneself, even if it means doing something that seems impossible.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#58. It is right to hope for the best about everybody, and not to expect the worst. This sounds like a truism, but it has comforted me before now, and some day you'll find it useful. One has always to try to think more of others than of oneself, and it is best not to prejudge people on the bad side.

Elizabeth Gaskell

#59. I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.

Giacomo Leopardi

#60. Among many reasons for being stupid it may be urged, it is being like other people, and living like one's neighbours, and indeed without it, it may be difficult to love some neighbours as oneself: now seeing the necessity of being dull, you won't, I hope, take it amiss that you find me so ...

Elizabeth Montagu

#61. Everything and everyone has a place to be, Echo. It's just a matter of how they get there and when. You have a place; you just have to find it.

Nadege Richards

#62. The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#63. It is better to know oneself than know to others. So not find fault others see first in yourself. When one experiences truth, the madness of finding fault with others disappears.

Suman Jyoty Bhante

#64. I go to a lot of museums, I read a ton of poetry - anything that's a creative expression of oneself, I find really inspiring.

Rachelle Lefevre

#65. One has to taste an experience for oneself and find out if the thing is genuine or helpful. Then, before discarding something, one has to go further, so that one gets firsthand experience.

Chogyam Trungpa

#66. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

Virginia Woolf

#67. Controlling speech and breath, and diving deep within oneself - like one who, to find a thing that has fallen into water, dives deep down - one must seek out the source whence the aspiring ego springs.

Ramana Maharshi

#68. Assimilating the style of predecessors is necessary before one can develop one's own. Only by immersing oneself in the domain can one find out whether there is room left for contributing creatively to it, and whether one is capable of doing so.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#69. There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.

Diana Gabaldon

#70. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness.

Virginia Woolf

#71. Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

Cesare Pavese

#72. To find one's purpose is to discover one's worth, discern one's direction, wholly dedicate oneself to the journey, and forge an unbending determination that I will not leave the world the way I found it. This week's blog outlines the finding of our purpose.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#73. If you plan to be happy, you will find at least one reason to be happy. Real happiness is never accidental. Discover happiness on your terms.

Olarewaju Oladipo

#74. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

C. G. Jung

#75. He was strict and hard and had perfectly clear and definite ideas about duty, where the others were concerned. For oneself one can always find circumstances that alter cases

Hjalmar Soderberg

#76. Don't you find it odd that two of the foremost symptoms of insanity are the hearing voices and talking to oneself? Is it any wonder that language is an area of such interest in psychology?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

Mort W. Lumsden

#77. A man, engaged in his simple reflections in everyday life, will comprehend neither the possibility, nor the benefits of self-sacrifice, but, when given ("qu'on lui donne", Fr.) a great cause to defend, and he will find only natural to sacrifice oneself for it.

African Spir

#78. To sought out solace within yourself is the most difficult challenge and is quickly ignored by many, thus can only be achieved when you find truth within oneself

Yolanda De Iuliis

#79. Because of an instability at my own core, it comforts me to live, fixed, within a story. If reading is our consolation for having been allotted only one life, I find that writing oneself into a fictional world is even more comforting.

Norman Lock

#80. Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

Rollo May

#81. To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?

Albert Camus

#82. There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.

Henry David Thoreau

#83. The unbosoming oneself to another is a kind of release to the soul, which strives to lighten its burden and find ease by throwing off the weight that lay heavy upon it.

Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

#84. Be patient with yourself; trust in the Universe; find mentors; know that you can achieve whatever you set out to do.

Diane L. Dunton

#85. Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.

Ajahn Chah

#86. If folks don't like the way you look, they almost never take the time to find anything out about you. They just make up their own stories

Ann Haywood Leal

#87. The art of presenting oneself, he had once told Sybil, lies in creating an immediate shock which is countered by a slow retreat into custom. People never quite recover from my cravats, but they will never find the equal of my tailor. To be memorable is all, when it comes to dress.

Timothy Findley

#88. I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.

Marlene Dietrich

#89. To write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral. There, one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help; on scaffoldings, alone with one's consciousness.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#90. Nay, you don't throw away those misplaced beads.. you find them, pick them up and make a new necklace.. probably not as beautiful as you imagined..but wearable nevertheless..

Sanhita Baruah

#91. Those who seek eternity find a mind of infinity

Ana Claudia Antunes

#92. If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

Kristin Hannah

#93. In chanting, one tries to find one's own sound, literally, and then to go within that-to find the sounds within one's own sound, to bring out that which is within, to go into, explore and discover oneself.

Jill Purce

#94. It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#95. It is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed by someone wiser than oneself.

Marlene Dietrich