113 Inspiring Quotes To Find Yourself
I believe that one of the most important journeys we can take in life is the journey to find ourselves.
Whether we're in the midst of a major life transition, struggling to make a decision, or simply feeling lost or disconnected, the search for our true selves can be both challenging and rewarding.
One tool that can be incredibly helpful on this journey is quotes.
Throughout history, many wise and insightful individuals have shared their thoughts on the process of finding oneself, offering inspiration, guidance, and a new perspective.
From philosophers to poets, artists to scientists, the words of those who have come before us can offer a roadmap for our own journey of self-discovery.
Whether we're seeking to discover our purpose, clarify our values, or simply become more comfortable in our own skin, quotes about finding oneself can be a powerful tool.
They offer a way to reflect on our experiences, connect with others who have faced similar challenges, and gain insight into the complexities of the human experience.
For those who are feeling lost or disconnected, quotes about finding oneself can help to provide a much-needed sense of direction and purpose.
By reminding us of the importance of self-exploration, these quotes can help us to stay focused on our goals and motivated to keep moving forward.
For those who are going through a major life transition, such as a career change or the end of a relationship, quotes about finding oneself can provide a sense of comfort and reassurance.
They offer a reminder that change is a natural part of the human experience, and that through this process of change and growth, we have the opportunity to discover who we truly are.
Finally, for those who are simply seeking to deepen their understanding of themselves and the world around them, quotes about finding oneself can offer a wealth of insight and inspiration.
From the teachings of ancient philosophers to the musings of modern-day writers, these quotes offer a glimpse into the vast and complex world of human experience.
The search for oneself is a deeply personal and often challenging journey.
However, by incorporating quotes about finding oneself into our daily lives, we can gain inspiration, guidance, and a new perspective on this important process.
Whether we're seeking clarity, motivation, or simply a deeper sense of connection, the wisdom of those who have come before us can be a powerful tool on our journey of self-discovery.
42 Self-Discovery Quotes
1. "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." - Carl Jung
2. "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mahatma Gandhi
3. "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." - St. Augustine
4. "Go find yourself first so you can also find me." - Rumi
5. "One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up." - Friedrich Nietzsche
6. "Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau
7. "People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates." - Thomas Szasz
8. "I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision." - Eleanor Roosevelt
9. "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." - Aristotle
10. "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." - Maya Angelou
11. "Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly." - Epictetus
12. "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power." - Lao Tzu
13. "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
14. "To find yourself, think for yourself." - Socrates
15. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
16. "Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
17. "If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be." - Maya Angelou
18. "Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread." - Richard Wright
19. "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why." - Mark Twain
20. "Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?" - Theodore Roethke
21. "The only journey is the journey within." - Rainer Maria Rilke
22. "Don’t spend all of your time trying to FIND yourself. Spend your time CREATING yourself into a person that you’ll be proud of." - Sonya Parker
23. "Finding oneself and one’s path is like waking up on a foggy day. Be patient, and presently the fog will clear and that which has always been there can be seen. The path is already there to follow." - Rasheed Ogunlaru
24. "One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller
25. "It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too." - H.W. Shaw
26. "A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
27. "There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self." - Aldous Huxley
28. "Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be." - Joseph Campbell
29. "Not all who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien
30. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - Oscar Wilde
31. "For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed." - Clifton Fadiman
32. "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." - George Moore
33. "Each man’s life represents a road toward himself." - Herman Hesse
34. "I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of." - Michel de Montaigne
35. "Be who you are, and find yourself so you can be your own person and enjoy life with no regret." - Bonnie Zackson Koury
36. "You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need." - Jerry Gillies
37. "When you fight yourself to discover the real you, there is only one winner." - Stephen Richards
38. "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
39. "You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one." - James A. Froude
40. "Find yourself first-like yourself first-love yourself FIRST & friendship & love will naturally find YOU." - Mandy Hale
41. "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." - Jean de La Fontaine
42. "You’ve got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself." - D. H. Lawrence
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14 Famous Book Quotes About Finding Yourself
43. "You would be much better off in reading this book if you asked yourself who you are, rather than asked who I am, for you cannot understand what I am unless you understand the nature of personality and the characteristics of consciousness." - Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul
44. "It’s like my identity’s an orbit that I’ve strayed far away from." - Kafka on the Shore
45. "They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else’s path and you are not on the adventure." - The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work
46. "He didn’t want to be a mirror of his father. The thought made him cringe. I want to do something. Be somebody. But what? But what?" - The Chocolate War
47. "I sometimes lift the brocade cover on the mirror of my makeup stand, and have the briefest flicker of a thought that I may find her there in the glass, smirking at me." - Memoirs of a Geisha
48. "Daughter of the Erl King and the Elfen Queen, that’s who you are." - Witch Child
49. "What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow." - Kafka on the Shore
50. "Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it." - The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
51. "Maybe we all want to burn off across the horizon, into space, perhaps, to take off into some unknown territory and meet ourselves out there." - Dear Nobody
52. "The slave girl didn’t have a name; she didn’t know how old she was. She had lived at Huangling Palace since her parents had sold her to Lan when she was a small child." - The Dragon Keeper
53. "The Path is a new life where you have the chance of truly finding yourself. This pilgrimage can be a return to the basics of the human nature, paying attention to the small simple things that we always forget in our busy lives..." - The Path
54. "Travel far enough, you meet yourself." - Cloud Atlas
55. "The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you’ve never even thought of. And you’re stuck with you’re past when you’re stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through." - The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work
56. "I abandoned my disguise and became myself, free from fear or weakness or lust." - Watchmen
28 Find Your Inner Self With These Quotes
57. "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." - Marcus Aurelius
58. "Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau
59. "The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see." - Albert Einstein
60. "Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it, your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life." - Eckhart Tolle
61. "In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir
62. "You have to keep breaking heart until it opens." - Rumi
63. "Finding yourself is an enlightening experience. You become self-sufficient and do things for others without expectations of something in return. You are no longer needy and become utterly grateful for all the things people have done for you in the past." - James Seaton
64. "And into the forest, I go, to lose my mind and find my soul." - John Muir
65. "Don’t worry about finding your soulmate. Find yourself." - Jason Evert
66. "By discovering nature, you discover yourself." - Maxime Lagace
67. "Finding yourself is a time of harmony because you develop that philosophy or belief system that will carry you throughout the rest of your life. When you love yourself, and who you are, you will savor and enjoy both life’s pain and pleasures." - James Seaton
68. "We must fall in love with ourselves. I don’t like myself. I’m crazy about myself." - Mae West
69. "If you’re waiting for your next love, look in the mirror." - Bridgett Devoue
70. "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." - Carl Jung
71. "Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world." - Lucille Ball
72. "Nature is a beautiful place to get lost and find yourself. A place which will never disappoint you and you will love it always. A place close to your heart where you can find peace. A place where you can feel lively and get to know a little more of you." - Aksu
73. "You alone are not enough. You have nothing to prove." - Maya Angelou
74. "Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one content with oneself, one doesn’t need other’s approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her."- Lao Tzu
75. "When you discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy; care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life." - Jean Shinoda Bolen
76. "Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do." - Brene Brown
77. "I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery –air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘this is what it is to be happy.” - Sylvia Plath
78. "As I began to love myself, I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is authenticity." - Charlie Chaplin
79. "Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept." - Anna Taylor
80. "Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance." - Brene Brown
81. "Love the life you have while you create the life of your dreams." - Hal Elrod
82. "It is so important to take time for yourself and find clarity. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself." - Diane Von Furstenberg
83. "Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway." - Mother Teresa
84. "Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it." - Thaddeus Goals
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29 More Positive Quotes About Finding Yourself
85. "Don’t let pain define you, let it refine you." - Tim Fargo
86. "One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better." - Blise Pascal
87. "If you’re being ignored, that’s a good time to concentrate on finding yourself and creating your own mystery." - Lykke Li
88. "In the end you don’t so much find yourself as you find someone who knows who you are." - Robert Brault
89. "If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found." - Unknown
90. "If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life." - James A. Michener
91. "I wasn’t searching for something or someone….I was searching for me." - Carrie Bradshaw
92. "First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others." - Amos Bronson Alcott
93. "All this time I was finding myself, And I didn’t know I was lost." - Avicci, Wake Me Up
94. "You’ve got to find yourself first. Everything else’ll follow." - Charles de Lint
95. "I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want." - Mark Twain
96. "Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
97. "There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self." - Benjamin Franklin
98. "Why should we honor those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself." - William Butler Yeats
99. "To be curious about that which is not one’s concern while still in ignorance of oneself is absurd." - Plato
100. "All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." - James Thurber
101. "What you fear is inside yourself… The power to do great or terrible things." - Liam Neeson
102. "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
103. "You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, ‘I’m proud of what I am and who I am, and I’m just going to be myself." - Mariah Carey
104. "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
105. "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." - William Shakespeare
106. "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust
107. "Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery." - Matthew Arnold
108. "Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not." - Mooji
109. "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
110. "Fight what you are today to become what you wanna be tomorrow." - Sipho P. Nkosi
111. "The longest journey is the journey inward." - Doug Hammarskjold
112. "The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself." - Myles Munroe
113. "One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better." - Blaise Pascal
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How Can Reading Quotes About Finding Yourself Be Beneficial?
Reading quotes about finding oneself can be beneficial in several ways.
Firstly, they offer a fresh perspective on the human experience.
Sometimes we can feel stuck in our own heads, unsure of how to move forward or what our next steps should be.
Quotes about finding oneself can help to break through this mental block by offering new insights, ideas, and perspectives on what it means to be human.
Secondly, they can provide a source of inspiration and motivation.
Many quotes about finding oneself come from individuals who have overcome challenges, faced adversity, and emerged stronger and more resilient.
Reading about their experiences can be incredibly motivating, reminding us that we too have the power to overcome our own obstacles and emerge stronger on the other side.
Thirdly, quotes about finding oneself can help to validate our own experiences and feelings.
When we're going through a difficult time, it can be easy to feel isolated and alone.
Reading quotes from others who have faced similar challenges can help to remind us that we're not alone, and that our experiences are valid and important.
Finally, quotes about finding oneself can offer practical guidance and advice for those who are seeking to deepen their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Whether it's through meditation, introspection, or simply taking time to connect with others, these quotes can offer valuable insights into the process of self-discovery and growth.
Next Steps
There are several ways to implement quotes about finding oneself into daily life:
- Create A Daily Quote Practice: Choose a quote about finding oneself that resonates with you and read it every day. You could write it down and keep it somewhere visible, or even make it your phone's lock screen. By reading the same quote each day, you'll begin to internalize its message and apply it to your own life.
- Use Quotes As Journal Prompts: If you keep a journal, use quotes about finding oneself as prompts for reflection. Write about what the quote means to you, how it applies to your own experiences, and any insights or revelations you have as a result.
- Share Quotes With Others: If you have friends or family members who are also on a journey of self-discovery, share quotes about finding oneself with them. Discuss the quote together, and share your own insights and experiences. This can be a great way to deepen your connections with others while also gaining new perspectives on your own journey.
- Create A Quote Wall: Choose a few of your favorite quotes about finding oneself and write them on sticky notes. Stick them to a wall in your home or office where you'll see them often. This can serve as a visual reminder of the importance of self-discovery and growth.
- Use Quotes As Affirmations: Choose a quote about finding oneself that speaks to you and turn it into an affirmation. Repeat the affirmation to yourself throughout the day, either out loud or silently. This can be a powerful way to reframe negative self-talk and stay focused on your goals and values.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Are Quotes About Finding Oneself So Popular?
Quotes about finding oneself are popular because they offer a succinct and often profound insight into the human experience.
Many people are searching for meaning and purpose in their lives, and these quotes can offer guidance and inspiration on that journey.
Additionally, quotes from notable figures who have struggled with similar issues can provide validation and comfort to those who are feeling lost or uncertain.
How Can I Know Which Quotes About Finding Oneself Will Resonate With Me?
The best way to find quotes about finding oneself that resonate with you is to read widely and pay attention to what speaks to you.
Consider your own experiences and the challenges you've faced, and look for quotes that offer insights or perspectives that resonate with your own journey.
You can also seek out quotes from individuals whose experiences or perspectives you admire.
Can Reading Quotes About Finding Oneself Really Help Me To Find Myself?
While reading quotes about finding oneself isn't a magic solution, it can be a valuable tool on the journey of self-discovery.
Quotes can offer insights, inspiration, and guidance, reminding us that we're not alone in our struggles and that others have found meaning and purpose in their lives.
Ultimately, finding oneself is a process that requires self-reflection, introspection, and action, but quotes can serve as a valuable source of motivation and encouragement along the way.