Curated Quotes About Self-Discovery to Ponder and Share

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Don’t look back -- you’re not going that way.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

Follow your own star!

I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.

A year from now you will wish you had started today.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

True self-discovery begins where your comfort zone ends.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

A man who loves himself takes the first step towards real love.

We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

Our own life has to be our message.

Become who you are.

Study the past if you would define the future.

Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

If you have three people in your life that you can trust, you can consider yourself the luckiest person in the whole world.

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Love who you are, embrace who you are. Love yourself. When you love yourself, people can kind of pick up on that: they can see confidence, they can see self-esteem, and naturally, people gravitate towards you.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

You just have to be yourself and go full with confidence and be courageous.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

All serious daring starts from within.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.

It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.

Be Yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just Be.

Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

It's OK if you mess up, that's how you get wiser. Give yourself a break. And don't give up! Good things take time, and you're getting there.

We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here now with the power to shape your day and your future.

It is wisdom to know others; It is enlightenment to know one's self.

The more one forgives himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

What you discover on your own is always more exciting than what someone else discovers for you-it's like the marriage between romantic love and an arranged marriage.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates.

We have stories to tell, stories that provide wisdom about the journey of life. What more have we to give one another than our 'truth' about our human adventure as honestly and as openly as we know how?

Sometimes a journey is not about the traveler. It is not about a destination. It is about the bringing together of worlds. It is about lighting a path.

Gratification comes when you help someone else.

Here is the truth about self-discovery: it is never without cost.

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there.

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular -- but one must take it because it is right.

In suffering we find our truest selves.

Funny, how it took a little bit of pain to remember that certain parts of yourself were alive.

You find out who you are by figuring out who and what you're not.

You'll never be able to find yourself if you're lost in someone else.

I am Western and I see no need or reason to change that. The Western lifestyle has many things to offer, as do the Eastern methods of self discovery. I think blending the two is very desirable.

Honor your seeing... digest your seeing... otherwise it becomes just another thing you file away in the mind's department of philosophy...you're here for much more than knowledge...you are here for self-discovery.

If you would find gold, you must search where gold is.

One must know one's own secret.

All education is self-discovery.

You've got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself.

What is important in self-discovery is the person who keeps going, who has a smile, who is kind to others, who works hard at everything, and who keeps their mind on their own business and not everybody else's.

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

If you aren't sure who you are, you might as well work on who you want to be.

Each man's life represents a road toward himself.

We discover in ourselves what others hide from us and we recognize in others what we hide from ourselves.

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.

Strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.

No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery -- the source of truth.

Be magic choose and believe that you can do anything you set your mind to believe. We are who we choose to be.

I believe the arts are the best way to help people go on a journey of self-discovery toward their own compassion and empathy for humanity and themselves.

It's important to let kids be themselves and to let them make mistakes. Self-discovery goes a long way.

I faced a certain amount of violence. It taught me that I had to learn to protect myself -- and it made me stronger. It could have made me step backwards with my self-discovery. Instead, it pushed me further.

I'm an interior designer from the soul. It's not about just putting things in a room. It's much deeper and broader. It's about self-discovery.

I believe that self-discovery is an ongoing thing.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

The journey we're on is as vast and sacred as the stars in the night sky.

When we get distracted with someone else's goals, we get off track with our own higher purpose. And then there's a definite disconnect from our soul. Who has time for that?

Everyone has a ticket to wherever they want to go. All they have to do is know where they are going. If you don't know where you're going, you can't go where you want. That's the ticket.

Why do mythological heroes of past civilizations have a thousand faces? Is it because each one of us takes a heroic journey of self-discovery?

A period of darkness is essential in order to expand personal awareness. Experiencing sadness and loss makes a person appreciative of life, more tenderhearted, and open to living life as an ecstatic journey of discovery.

Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.

Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character.

There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you've grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.

A wise man travels to discover himself.

If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves. They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political. Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.

If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

The delights of self-discovery are always available.

I went to a motivational training course once, a course of self-discovery, and I found out after a week that my fear -- it was not a fear of not being accepted -- was a very violent fear of failure.

One trend I see is the rejection of growth for self-discovery and the pursuit of authentic community. So we keep whittling our spiritual community to a smaller and smaller and more exclusive inner circle. The problem is if the diagnoses are wrong, so will be the cure.

Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.

Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

The only journey is the journey within.

Sometimes we must lose ourselves to find ourselves.

Our time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

I can last two months on a good compliment.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

I think somehow we learn who we really are and then we live with that decision.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Your real self may be hiding somewhere, look for it within, when you find yourself, you can freely be what you want to be.

Be who you are, and find yourself so you can be your own person and enjoy life with no regret.

People who fit don't seek. The seekers are those that don't fit.

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.

You are not a bad person because you are gay. You are you because you are you and you were meant to be you so be you proudly.

We established most of our self-beliefs during our childhood, but they were based on our limited understanding of the world around us. They are either flawed or have become outdated. We can't take these beliefs at face value anymore.

Do something today that your future self will thank you for.

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.

Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.

I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.

When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

The worst curse to befall anyone is stagnation, a banal existence, the quiet desperation that comes out of a need for conformity.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.

Remember: no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.

Believe in yourself and you will be unstoppable.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

Never apologize for being yourself.

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

Man conquers the world by conquering himself.

Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.

Envy is an insult to oneself.

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

One was a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi. In it was a passage where he said that religion, the pursuing of the inner journey, should not be separated from the pursuing of the outer and social journey, because we are not isolated beings.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.