The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Hermann Hesse3 quotes
If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. — Hermann Hesse · 1910I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? — Hermann Hesse · 1919No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that-one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. — Hermann Hesse · 1919James Joyce2 quotes
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce · 1915Matthew Arnold2 quotes
Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery. — Matthew Arnold · 1852And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true. — Matthew Arnold · 1852Albert Camus1 quote
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus · 1951Benjamin Franklin1 quote
What you would seem to be, be really. — Benjamin Franklin · 1744Betty Friedan1 quote
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. — Betty Friedan · 1963Dannie Abse1 quote
Are all men in disguise except those crying? — Dannie Abse · 1986Del Griffith1 quote
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right. I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get. — Del Griffith · 1987Francis Bacon1 quote
Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others. — Francis Bacon · 1625Fred Rogers1 quote
The greatest gift you will ever give is your honest self. — Fred Rogers · 2003George Hanson1 quote
Talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. — George Hanson · 1969Gobber1 quote
Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not. — Gobber · 2010Henrik Ibsen1 quote
What ought a man to be? Well, my short answer is "himself." — Henrik Ibsen · 1867James Baldwin1 quote
Best advice I ever got was an old friend mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all. — James Baldwin · 1984Jiddu Krishnamurti1 quote
A lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti · 1970Jim Morrison1 quote
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first. — Jim Morrison · 1981Joan Didion1 quote
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home. — Joan Didion · 1961Kate Chopin1 quote
She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. — Kate Chopin · 1899Michel de Montaigne1 quote
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Oscar Wilde1 quote
The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Ralph Waldo Emerson1 quote
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Richard Bach1 quote
You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. — Richard Bach · 1970Robert Louis Stevenson1 quote
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1882Troy Dyer1 quote
Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself. — Troy Dyer · 1994William Shakespeare1 quote
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 · 1616