I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
~Michel de Montaigne
If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found. ~Author Unknown
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, 1854
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~George Moore
It is good to feel lost... because it proves you have a navigational sense of where "Home" is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn't that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.
~Erika Harris, empathicwriter.com
If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead. ~Gelett Burgess
Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
~Elizabeth Bibesco, Haven, 195
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. ~Amiel, Journal, 1884
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. ~Muhammad Ali
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ~Wallace Stevens
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. ~G.K. Chesterton, "The Logic of Elfland," Orthodoxy, 1908
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. ~Author Unknown
It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. ~James Baldwin
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud. ~Carol Shields
To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution. ~Jo Coudert, Advice From A Failure (Thanks, Elizabeth!)
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
~Henry David Thoreau
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own. ~Alice Walker
Why should we honour 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
If you haven't had at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature.
~Phyllis Battelle
Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time. ~Timothy Leary
I've left Bethlehem and I feel free... I've left the girl I was supposed to be and some day I'll be born. ~Paula Cole
Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery. ~Matthew Arnold, "Self-Dependence," Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, 1852
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
~Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825
No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. ~Thomas Mann
Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character. Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul. ~Author Unknown
There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. ~Pearl Bailey
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
He who knows others is learned; He who knows himself is wise. ~Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching
[Y]ou must learn what life is now, not from me, but from life itself; but, if you will hear an old man's opinion, I will give it you. If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, supposing you will grow into it as a matter of course by a rule of necessity, in the same way as your body grows old, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man into his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. Go out into life, you will find your chance there, and only there.
~James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith, 1849
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
~Alan Watts