These self discovery quotes will inspire you. Self-discovery is the act or process of achieving self-knowledge or the process of acquiring insight into one’s own character.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging self discovery quotes, self discovery sayings, and self discovery proverbs.
Best Self Discovery Quotes
- “I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.” ~ Dean Koontz
- “Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.” ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
- “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ~ Carl Jung
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“Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.” ~ Rumi
- “Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don’t find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.” ~ David Leonhardt , Self discovery quotes finding yourself
- “If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven’t been born yet.” ~ Neil Simon
- “Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.” ~ Rollo May
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“There are people who live their whole lives on the default settings, never realizing you can customize.” ~ Robert Brault
- “People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.” ~ Thomas Szasz
- “One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
- “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
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“Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~ Anna Quindlen
- “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” ~ Alice Walker
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“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” ~ Jean de La Fontaine
- “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.” ~ Ben Stein
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“Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” ~ Marianne Williamson
- “One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.” ~ Blaise Pascal
- “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” ~ Mark Twain
- “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.” ~ T. S. Eliot
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“People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “Mistakes are a part of the dues one pays for a full life.” ~ Sophia Loren
- “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ~ Aristotle
- “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Laozi
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“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
- “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust
- “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung
- “After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.” ~ Sophia Loren
- “Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.” ~ Robert Breault
- “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” ~ Jackson Pollock
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“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” ~ Alan Alda
- “Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.” ~ Matthew Arnold
- “We read books to find out who we are.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
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“The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.” ~ Julien Green
- “You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.” ~ Jerry Gillies
- “The unexamined life is not worth living.” ~ Socrates
- “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~ T. S. Eliot
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“All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.” ~ James Thurber
- “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.” ~ Teresa of Avila
- “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” ~ Oscar Wilde
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“The delights of self-discovery are always available.” ~ Gail Sheehy
- “Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
- “Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.” ~ Andre Gide
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“He not busy being born is busy dying.” ~ Bob Dylan
- “Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.” ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
- “A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox , Self discovery quotes about growth
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“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton
- “Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.” ~ Carl Jung
- “What you discover on your own is always more exciting than what someone else discovers for you – it’s like the marriage between romantic love and an arranged marriage.” ~ Terrence Rafferty
- “Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore.” ~ Dorothy Bryant
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“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” ~ Gerry Spence
- “The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.” ~ Richard Bach
- “For most men, life is a search for the proper Manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.” ~ Clifton Fadiman
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“For most men, life is a search for the proper Manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.” ~ Clifton Fadiman
- “Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver
- “There comes a time in the seeker’s life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved.” ~ Sri Chinmoy
