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Identity Quotes
"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."
30
"A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself."
29
"I am first of all from La Castellane and Marseille."
29
"Who are you without your labels and attachments to the issues you are passionate about? Remove the emotions, remove the beliefs and associations, and simply focus on the rational and practical applications that promote peaceful progression."
29
"You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages."
29
"I am not one and simple, but complex and many."
28
"You are the stories and incidents that you never tell to anyone. You are the thoughts that you get while standing under the shower. You are those memories that won't lets you sleep at night peacefully. You are those words that you will never say while speaking with someone. You are those scars that you always hide from everyone. You are those little secrets that you will never let the world know. You are everything that you hide under the identity that you call the real you."
28
"Be an individual, let out the self that hides away at the expense of others approval."
28
"Song of MyselfI have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now."
27
"He awaits himself while walking, out of the icy circle to escape."
27
"In the beginning, some people try to appear that everything about them is "in black and white," until later their true colors come out."
27
"His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile."
27
"Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans!"
27
"On another level, I want to mention that I have a strong Jewish identity and - over the years - have been involved in several Jewish projects, such as the establishment of a strong program of Judaic Studies at the University of California in San Diego."
26
"I was born in Washington State and have lived here for 42 plus years."
26
"And, for one" ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead."
26
"It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim."
26
"I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room."
26
"You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act..."
26
"On one hand she seems so agile, so athletic, and yet I've seen her appear so awkward that it embarrassed me. She gives the impression of a hard, worldly adroitness, and in some situations she's like an adolescent: rigid with ancient, middle class attitudes, unable to think for herself, falling back on old verities...victim of her family teaching, shocked by what shocks people, wanting what people usually want. She wants a home, a husband, and her idea of a husband is a man who earns a certain amount of money, helps around the garden, does the dishes...the idea of a good husband that's found in This Week magazine; a viewpoint from the most ordinary stratum, that great ubiquitous world of family life, transmitted from generation to generation. Despite her wild language."
26
"And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes nice care of all his mirrors."
26
"Perception of a self is not simply about actuality. Human beings' identities are self-generating and people constantly revise and recreate the story of their being. Coming-into-being, not being, is the highest expression of reality. We only attain the fullest knowledge of a living thing including ourselves when we know what it was, understand what it now is, and understand what it can become. We do not know the truth of a living thing's existence until we discern its entire history from development to demise."
26
"I sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow-written on, rewritten, smoothed over."
26
"He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either."
26
"One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth is what one becomes."
25
"I'm not a supermodel. That's not what I do."
25
"Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that- which here means?""I'll probably outgrow it," I said."
25
"Why should we change that which makes us unique?"
25
"I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two.The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew.The changeless part was always true, The growing part was always new,And I wondered, when the tale was through, Which part was me, and which was you."
25
"He laughed a lot, but as a boy he had been so self-conscious about being dark-skinned that he went to the fields to get buffalo milk to spread on his face, thinking it would make him lighter. It was only when he met my mother that he became comfortable in his own skin. Being loved by such a beautiful girl gave him confidence."
24
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."
24
"My name is James Guckert. Well, when you read it, it's always pronounced some other way."
24
"To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead."
24
"The man who came into the room did not look as though his name was, or could have ever been, Robinson. It might have been Demetrius, or Isaacstein, or Perenna - though not one or the other in particular. He was not definitely Jewish, nor definitely Greek nor Portugese nor Spanish, nor South American. What did seem highly unlikely was that he was an Englishman called Robinson."
24
"The truly fearless think of themselves as normal."
24
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