We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.

I want you to be everything that's you deep at the center of your being.

Once we accept our limits we go beyond them.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

I am the miracle.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.

I can be changed by what happens to me. but i refuse to be reduced by it.

Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

If I were two-faced would I be wearing this one?

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it, the tree is the real thing.

In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.

Don't let them change ya, or even rearrange ya.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because in the end those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter.

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.

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

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.

If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

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

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us, and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

We are what we believe we are.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Let nothing dim the light that shines from within.

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

The act of discovering  who we are will force us to accept that we can go further than we think.

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

He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

It ain't what they call you it's what you answer to.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head and is known to none but himself.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

This above all, to thine own self be true.

I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

I've never let anyone talk me into not believing in myself.

My wealth is in my knowledge of self, love, and spirituality.

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.

The best way to be original is to be yourself.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

What the superior person seeks is in themselves. What the mean person seeks is in others.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes.

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

The people in my songs are all me.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

I didn't want to just be another girl singer. I wanted there to be something that set me apart.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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

If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.

As soon as you trust yourself you will know how to live.

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one's self.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, define yourself.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.

Each of us has that right that possibility to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself she will be invented. So to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.

Each morning when I awake I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.

Only the shallow know themselves.

You have to be someone.

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

Sometimes you feel awkward being what you're best at, you feel like you have to be something new.

As human beings our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.

I sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you.

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I born in the world, raised in the world, having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

Everybody likes to go their own way - to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties and its very atoms.

The spirit is the true self. The spirit the will to win and the will to excel are the things that endure.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice though, not in principle.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions brave by performing brave actions.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

I'm afraid that sometimes you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.

You are you. Now, isn’t that pleasant?

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

I'm a rebel, soul rebel. I'm a capturer, soul adventurer. 

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It's a natural process.

What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

Don’t allow your wounds to transform you into someone you are not.

Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous, but they won't be avoided.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions,

A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!

He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value... he has given to me myself.

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.

I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had, I'd have done it a lot earlier.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

This is my life. It is my one time to be me. I want to experience every good thing.

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.

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

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

We are all alike on the inside.

What is it in us that makes us feel the need to keep pretending... we gotta let ourselves be.

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

'Born this Way' is about being yourself and loving who you are and being proud.

Such as we are made of such we be.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.

Act as you speak, speak as you feel. Do not play false to your own conscience by forcibly enslaving it and embarking on actions not approved by it.

For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.

God has given you one face and you make yourself another.

Bob Marley isn't my name. I don't even know my name yet.

I'm not a person that socializes very well.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes.

I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.

I'm not Mother Teresa, but I'm not Charles Manson either.