A carpenter is known by his chips.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
A wild goose never laid a tame egg.
Gaelic (on authenticity)
Be not water, taking the tint of all colors.
Syrian (on authenticity)
Believe in yourself.
unknown
Birds of a feather, flock together.
Robert Burton (1577-1640)
Clothes may disguise a fool, but his voice will give him away.
unknown
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
Appius (c.470 BC)
Everyone is the age of their heart.
Guatemalan (on youth and age)
Hay is for horses.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
If the shoe fits, wear it.
Nicholas Breton (c.1545-1626)
Never spend time with people who don’t respect you.
Maori (on courtesy and respect)
One flower makes no garland.
George Herbert (1593-1632)
Tell me whom you love and I’ll tell you who you are.
African-American (on life and living)
The blocks of wood should not dictate to the carver.
Maori (on art and creativity)
The devil looks after his own.
Scottish Proverb
We boil at different degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Who has deceived thee as oft as thyself.
Ben Franklin (1706-1790)
You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Irish Proverb
You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.
unknown
You can’t judge a horse by its harness.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
George R.R. Martin
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
Charlotte Bronte
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.
Chuck Palahniuk
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
William Shakespeare
Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
Orson Scott Card
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.
Chuck Palahniuk
In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.
Erik Erikson
Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man’s life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.
B.R. Ambedkar
Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.
Russell M. Nelson
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss
The reward for conformity is that everybody likes you except yourself.
Rita Mae Brown
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
Don’t let the noise of others? opinions drown out your own inner voice.
Steve Jobs
So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things.
Stephen Chbosky
You can’t change who you are. No matter how you struggle, some things will never change. And maybe they shouldn’t.
Rob Thurman
People fear their hidden selves, afraid that they will burst out.
Gregory Benford
The only true happiness lies in knowing who you are … and making peace with it.
Laurell K. Hamilton
Who knows who you are … A person is a novel: you don’t know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth reading to the very end.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
To know who you are is the greatest power of all.
Sherilyn Kenyon and Diana Love
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.
Andre Guide
Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Parker J. Palmer
Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.
Blaise Pascal
You cannot belong to anyone else until you belong to yourself.
Pearl Bailey
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
James Baldwin
A man’s true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
Henry Ward Beecher
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
Tallulah Bankhead
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Socrates
