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

--Mooji

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

--Rita Mae Brown

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

--Aristotle

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.

--Abraham Maslow

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

--Rumi

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

--Maya Angelou

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

--Frank Lloyd Wright

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

--Osho

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

--Unknown Author

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

--Deepak Chopra

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

--Sensei Ogui

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

--Orhan Pamuk

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

--David Foster Wallace

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

--Phyllis Diller

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

--Osho

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

--Haruki Murakami

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

--Ricky Gervais

Only dead fish go with the flow.

--Derek Sivers

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

--Robert Greene

Believe in yourself and you will be unstoppable.

--Conor McGregor

Our own life has to be our message.

--Thích Nhất Hạnh

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

--Anthony Hopkins

This above all: to thine own self be true.

--William Shakespeare

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Longer Version:

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.


Never apologize for being yourself.

--Paulo Coelho

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

--Lao Tzu

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

--Ernest Hemingway

Man conquers the world by conquering himself.

--Zeno of Citium

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

--James Allen

Study the past if you would define the future.

--Confucius

Longer Version:

Study the past if you would define the future. I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.


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.

--Jim Morrison

Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.

--John Herschel

Envy is an insult to oneself.

--Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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

--Yayoi Kusama

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

--William Arthur Ward

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

--Walt Whitman

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

--Walt Disney

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

--Thomas Paine

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

--Thomas Carlyle

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.

--Satish Kumar

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

--Shunryu Suzuki

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

--Sun Tzu

Longer Version:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.


The unexamined life is not worth living.

--Socrates

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

--Selena Gomez

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

--Saint Teresa of Avila

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.

--Saint Augustine

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

--Rumi

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

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

--René Descartes

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.

--Ralph Marston

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

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

--Oprah Winfrey

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

--Plutarch

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

--Napoleon Hill

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.

--Michel de Montaigne

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

--Michel de Montaigne

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

--Michel de Montaigne

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

--Michel de Montaigne

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

--Michael Jordan

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

--Maya Angelou

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

--Maya Angelou

Longer Version:

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.


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

--Maxwell Maltz

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

--Marilyn Monroe

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

--Margaret Thatcher

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

--Marcus Garvey

Longer Version:

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.


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.

--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

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

--Mahatma Gandhi

Your self-worth has nothing to do with your craft or calling, and everything to do with how you treat yourself.

--Kris Carr

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

--Kahlil Gibran

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

--Lord Byron

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.

--Lilly Singh

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.

--Lao Tzu

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

--James Anthony Froude

I trust no one, not even myself.

--Joseph Stalin

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

--Joseph Campbell

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

--John Locke

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

--John Dewey

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

--Jean de La Fontaine

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

--Jim Rohn

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

--Jane Austen

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.

--James E. Faust

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

--James Allen

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

--Jackson Pollock

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

--Herman Melville

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

--Henry David Thoreau

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

--Henri Bergson

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

--Gustave Flaubert

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

--George Sand

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

--George Bernard Shaw

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

--Gabby Douglas

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

--Frederick Douglass

Longer Version:

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace.


All serious daring starts from within.

--Eudora Welty

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

--Erik Erikson

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

--Epicurus

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

--Confucius
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