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Identity Quotes
"Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura's method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizeable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes)."
14
"He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle."
14
"A police photograph is like a passport photograph: the intelligence which casts a veil over the crude common shape is never recorded by the cheap lens. No one can deny the contours of the flesh, the shape of nose and mouth, and yet we protest, This isn't me."
14
"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly."
14
"The term "musalman refers to someone with "musallam iman, that means, a pure conscience. Thus, any individual whose conscience is pure and clear, who can think for himself or herself, is a musalman or muslim, regardless of socio-religious background. Likewise, any human being who loves the neighbor as much as his or her own family is a Christian."
14
"Whoever challenges freaks should noticethat in the method he does not mature into a beast."
14
"He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form."
14
"He was a chicken in the outside world that turned into a lion on entering the house."
14
"I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent."
14
"Stay insane, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention. Concentrate on this flower and allow the real "I" to reveal itself."
14
"What are these guys?" He whispered"Canadians," Percy said. Frank leaned away from him. "Excuse me?""Uh, no offense," Percy said. "That's what Annabeth called them when I fought them before. She said they live in the north, in Canada.""Yeah, well," Frank grumbled, "we're in Canada. I'm Canadian. But I've never seen those things before."
14
"We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences. When we walk down the memory lane, it can be unconsciously, willingly, selectively, impetuously or sometimes grudgingly. By following our stream of consciousness we look for lost time and things past. Some reminiscences become anchor points that can take another scope with the wisdom of hindsight. ['Walking down the memory lane']"
14
"Examine this statement: 'A woman cannot be a poet.' Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?"
14
"I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
14
"You are not the happy, unthinking child you have always appeared to be, accepting everything at its face value. You are not just one of the women of the household. You are Renisenb who wants to think for herself, who wonders about other people."
14
"But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try - Ransom has tried a hundred times - to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don't know that any of these attempts has helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender."
14
"By the way, only a real man can accept his feminine side.""I don't know who fed you that line of garbage, but I can promise she's laughing at you right now."
14
"So, you see; you have the soul of a missionary, the heart of a revolutionary and the mind of a reformer. But what are you to yourself and the family and friends who will always be there for you?"
14
"You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men."
14
"Each of us has our own unique traits, but we need them to fulfil our destiny."
14
"Don't ever confuse my personality with my attitude. My personality is who I am. My attitude always depends on who you are."
14
"I am not Tobias Eaton, not anymore, never again. I am Dauntless."
14
"I am nobody, even if I say I am this or that."
14
"I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."
14
"We had as lief not be as not be ourselves."
14
"I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play."
14
"At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating."
14
"Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored."
14
"I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't."
14
"I begin to be impatient of solitude - to feel its draperies hang sweltering, unwholesome about me."
14
"It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong."
14
"Among such persons are those women who transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but weakly developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or his social intercourse. Such beings maintain themselves best when they insert themselves in an alien organism; if they do not succeed they become vexed, irritated, and eat themselves up."
14
"The dead praetor raised his sword. ''Our desires reveal us. They show us for who we really are. Someone has come come for you, Jason Grace."
13
"You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you."
13
"We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany."
13
"Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse locations extols a vision of cultural hybridity, border crossing, subjectivity constructed out of plurality, the vast majority of folks in this society still believe in a notion of identity that is rooted in a sense of essential traits and characteristics that are fixed and static."
13
"To know oneself means above all to know what one likes."
13
"He had been present in their minds not as a man but as an idea."
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