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Identity Quotes

    “We can’t underestimate the value of silence. We need to create ourselves, need to spend time alone. If you don’t, you risk not knowing yourself and not realizing your dreams.” ~ Jewel

      “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~ Norman Cousins

        “When was the last time you spent an entire day doing exactly what you wanted to do? Said exactly what you wanted to say? You have a belief system, a rule set. Stuffing these things in a box and being someone else makes you exactly that. Someone else.” ~ Trevor Smith, Tiny Buddha

          “It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.” ~ Epictetus, The Art of Living

            “There are thousands of agreements you have made with yourself, with other people, with your dream of life, with God, with society, with your parents, with your spouse, with your children. But the most important agreements are the ones you made with yourself. In these agreements you tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you believe, and how to behave. The result is what you call your personality. In these agreements you say, “This is what I am. This is what I believe. I can do certain things, and some things I cannot do. This is reality, that is fantasy; this is possible, that is impossible.” ~ don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

              “You can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you. That’s a seed that you should really nurture in your mind. You don’t need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You don’t need the acceptance of others. You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.” ~ don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

                “Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action.” ~ don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

                  “I reassured my mother that it didn’t matter to me if my face was not symmetrical. Me, who had always cared about my appearance, how my hair looked! But when you see death, things change. ‘It doesn’t matter if I can’t smile or blink properly,” I told her. ‘I’m still me, Malala. The important thing is God has given me my life.’” ~ Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala

                    “I wanted someone to accept and appreciate my quirks, even when I didn’t. I wanted someone to see me for once. I wanted to be okay in the eyes of one person, at least. It never occurred to me that that ‘one person’ needed to be me.” ~ Banu Sekendur, Tiny Buddha

                      “Without the veil of envy, without the mirrors of comparison, without the torture of judgment, I saw the truth clearly: I was not where I wanted to be because I was not who I needed to become.” ~ Angela Turpin, Tiny Buddha

                        “Feeling better is more important than looking better.” ~ The Daily Zen

                          “No one else has had the same sequence of actions and reactions that have created your life and your realm of understanding.  No one right now is thinking exactly like you do.  You may, to the naked observer, appear to fit into a category, but that category most certainly does not define you.  The only quality you share with every other human in the world is your personal understanding that you are just unique enough to operate independently, and just similar enough to others to, in turn, recognize this uniqueness in them.” ~ Unknown, The Daily Zen

                            “We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.” ~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes Creator