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Welcome to our collection of quotes about self-discovery. We hope you enjoy pondering them. Please feel free to share the quotes and picture quotes wherever you like... and please link back to us if you do. Thanks! Wishing you a perfect day, full of self-discovery (-:

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

--Mary Engelbreit

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

--Judy Garland

True self-discovery begins where your comfort zone ends.

--Adam Braun

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

--Andre Berthiaume

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.

--S. I. Hayakawa

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.

--Thích Nhất Hạnh

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.

--David Levithan

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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.

--Marc Chernoff

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.

--Steve Maraboli

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

--Lao-Tzu

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.

--Viktor Frankl

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.

--Terrence Rafferty

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.

--Thomas Szasz

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?

--Rabbi Saul Rubin

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.

--Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Gratification comes when you help someone else.

--Trenice Carter

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

--Angela Flournoy

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.

--Damon Galgut

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.

--David Levithan

In suffering we find our truest selves.

--Jessie Burton

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

--Adi Alsaid

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

--Kelly Cutrone

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

--Colleen Hoover

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.

--Frederick Lenz

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.

--Mooji

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

--William Juneau

One must know one's own secret.

--Swami Nithyananda

All education is self-discovery.

--Ray Bradbury

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

--D.H. Lawrence

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.

--Frederick Lenz

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

--Thomas Mann

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

--Robert Breault

Each man's life represents a road toward himself.

--Hermann Hesse

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

--Luc de Clapiers

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.

--Andre Gide

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

--Saint Teresa of Avila

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

--Barry Long

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

--Will Smith

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.

--Asia Kate Dillon

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

--Kristin Cavallari

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.

--Daniela Vega

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.

--Alexandra Stoddard

I believe that self-discovery is an ongoing thing.

--Kevin Abstract

Longer Version:

I believe that self-discovery is an ongoing thing. I might not ever fully know who I am, but I also believe that I could be whoever I want, whenever I want.


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

--Anne Tyler

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

--Bert McCoy

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?

--Mary Vraa

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.

--Jacqueline Edgington

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?

--Kilroy J. Oldster

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.

--Kilroy J. Oldster

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

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

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.

--Sir Walter Scott

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

--Hugo Hamilton

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.

--Ella Wheeler Wilcox


A wise man travels to discover himself.

--James Russell Lowell

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

--Eckhart Tolle

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.

--Amit Ray

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.

--Alan Alda

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.

--Vernon Howard

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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

--Neil Simon

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

--Julien Green

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

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The delights of self-discovery are always available.

--Gail Sheehy

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.

--Emanuel Steward

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.

--Erwin McManus

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

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

--Adolf Loos

The only journey is the journey within.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes we must lose ourselves to find ourselves.

--Sonny Long

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

--Steve Jobs

I can last two months on a good compliment.

--Mark Twain

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

--Dolly Parton

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

--Carl Jung

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.

--Henri Frederic Amiel

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

--Eleanor Roosevelt

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

--Marcel Proust

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

--Michael Bassey Johnson

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

--Bonnie Zackson Koury

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

--Shannon L. Alder

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

--Dr. Seuss

Longer Version:

Why fit in when you were born to stand out? Dr.


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

--Roy T. Bennett

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.

--Tegan Quin

Follow your own star!

--Dante Alighieri

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

--Steve Maraboli

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.

--Yong Kang Chan

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

--Karen Lamb

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.

--Hermann Hesse

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

--Sean Patrick Flanery

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

--Simone de Beauvoir

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

--Mahatma Gandhi

All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.

--Bruce Lee

Longer Version:

All types of knowledge ultimately lead to self-knowledge. So, therefore, these people are asking me to teach them, not so much how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in. Rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination or whatever. So, in other words, they're paying me to show them, in combative form, the art of expressing the human body.


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

--Epictetus

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

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

--Ram Dass

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

--Philip Pullman
person holding glass globe beside water falls

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