“If you want to study yourself—look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people—look into your own heart.”
Friedrich Von Schiller, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 41)
“Scoff at the need for attention and approval—they will lead you astray. Feel some anger and resentment at the parental forces that want to foist upon you an alien vocation. It is a healthy part of your development to follow a path independent of your parents and to establish your own identity. Let your sense of rebellion fill you with energy and purpose.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 26)
“This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique. The first move toward mastery is always inward—learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force. Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place. It is never too late to start this process.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 13)
“If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know.”
Jean Rhys, via Sunbeams (Page 159)
“Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that.”
Ramana Maharshi, via Sunbeams (Page 155)
“It strikes me that the redwoods have accomplished, without effort or ego, what I have struggled so hard to do. They make existence, as I conceive of it—time measured in hundred-day increments—seem laughably naïve and nearsighted. I feel so tiny and rootless in their midst. Right now, I am no redwood. I am a speck, a spore surfing the breeze, directionless and susceptible, blown any which way, without the faintest clue about where I’ll land.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 304)
“It took me a while to say I was a cancer patient. Then, for a long time, I was only that. It’s time for me to figure out who I am now.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 221)
