Elena > Elena's Quotes

“You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms...”
― Anna Akhmatova

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“But if one doesn't really exist, one wonders why..." she hesitated.
"Why one makes such a fuss about things," Anthony suggested. "All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn't really a self—just the result of a lot of accidents. And of course," he went on, "once you start wondering, you see at once that there is no reason for making such a fuss. And then you don't make a fuss—that is, if you're sensible. Like me," he added, smiling.”
― Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”
― Betty Friedan

“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

“I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I've tried

to become someone else for a while,
only to discover that he, too, was me.”
― Stephen Dunn

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Madman

“I protect myself by refusing to know myself.”
― Floriano Martins

“When you become the image of your own imagination, it's the most powerful thing you could ever do.”
― RuPaul

“Be not another, if you can be yourself. ”
― Paracelsus

“Looking for who I am is who I am.”
― Tom Spanbauer, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”
― Edward Gorey

“Maybe you are what you can't not be.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure--as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been. Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew that they were there, gathering their forces toward a kind of palpability he could not see or hear. He was approaching them, he knew; but there was no need to hurry. He could ignore them if he wished; he had all the time there was.

There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, The Space Between

“Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.”
― John Lahr

“This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this up bringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth. Socrates' "Know thyself" has as much value as the "Be virtuous" of our confessionals. They reveal a nostalgia at the same time as an ignorance. They are sterile exercises on great subjects. They are legitimate only in precisely so far as they are approximate.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“In order to live a meaningful life,
humans need answers, i.e., a certain understanding of basic existential questions. These ‘answers’ do not have to be made completely explicit, as a lack of words does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but one has to able to place oneself in the world and build a relatively stable identity. The founding of such an identity is only possible if one can tell a relatively coherent story about who one has been and who one intends to be.”
― Lars Fr. H. Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom

“So who do I want to be tomorrow?”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“You’ll never know who you are unless you shed who you pretend to be.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“We must be trying to learn who we really are rather than trying to tell ourselves who we should be.”
― John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love