Trying to figure out who you are and what you want in life is no easy task. It’s a constant journey of exploration, and sometimes it feels like you’re taking one step forward and two steps back. But don’t worry, you’re not alone! Everyone goes through this process at some point in their lives. To help make things a little bit easier, we’ve put together 83 self discovery quotes to help you find yourself. So get comfortable, take a deep breath, and let the wisdom of these great minds wash over you. You might just find what you’ve been searching for all along.
Self Discovery Quotes
I think self-discovery is the greatest achievement in life, because once you discover yourself and accept what you are, then you can fulfil your true potential and be happy.
Marco Pierre White
The journey toward self-discovery is life’s greatest adventure.
Arianna Huffington
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
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Jung
The delights of self-discovery are always available.
Gail Sheehy
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
The longest journey is the journey inward.
Dag Hannarskjold
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
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall – that of our consciousness – between the world and ourselves.
Octavio Paz
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
It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.
S. I. Hayakawa
A wise man travels to discover himself.
James Russell Lowell
Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
William Butler Yeats
I think somehow we learn who we really are and then we live with that decision.
Eleanor Roosevelt
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Clifton Fadiman
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore
The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.
Cicero
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
Michel de Montaigne
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
James A. Froude
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
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Know thyself?’ If I knew myself, I’d run away.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are… things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
Douglas Adams
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.
Benjamin Franklin
Know yourself. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Ann Landers
Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.
Hugh Prather
Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Oscar Wilde
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
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
One was a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi. In it was a passage where he said that religion, the pursuing of the inner journey, should not be separated from the pursuing of the outer and social journey, because we are not isolated beings.
Satish Kumar
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
Aldous Huxley
It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.
H.W. Shaw
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
Jackson Pollock
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Buddha
All wonders you seek are within yourself.
Sir Thomas Browne
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
St. Augustine
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
Muhammad Ali
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
It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.
Lucille Ball
The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.
Carl Jung
Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
Matthew Arnold
All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber
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
Man can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as… from a lack of bread.
Richard Wright
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
Jean de La Fontaine
A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.
Les Brown
If you learn only methods, you’ll be tied to your methods but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 Wilhelm Nietzsche
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein
You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here now with the power to shape your day and your future.
Steve Maraboli
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces and which most men throw away.
Charles Caleb Colton
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E.E Cummings
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
Marianne Williamson
I was once afraid of people saying “Who does she think she is? Now I have the courage to stand and say, “This is who I am.
Oprah Winfrey
Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you.
Mooji
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Discovering who you are today is the first step to being who you will be tomorrow.
Destiny’s Odyssey
You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realising who you are at the deepest level.
Eckhart Tolle
It takes courage….to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
Marianne Williamson
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Socrates
Finding your passion isn’t just about careers and money. It’s about finding your authentic self. The one you’ve buried beneath other people’s needs.
Kristin Hannah
The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.
Myles Munroe
You have no need to travel anywhere. Journey within yourself, enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendour of your own light.
Rumi
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle
Once you’ve started down that road to self-discovery, no matter how treacherous the path before you, you can’t turn back. The universe doesn’t allow it.
Lisa Unger
When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible.
Tina Lifford
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Gandhi
Know thyself.
Socrates
In suffering we find our truest selves.
Jesie Burton
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
Lao Tzu
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. Elliot
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
Rumi
A Final Word
If there’s one thing these self discovery quotes have taught us, it’s that life is a journey. It’s up to you to pack your bags and set out on the road – sometimes you’ll find what you were looking for right around the corner, while other times you may have to go halfway around the world. The important thing is to keep exploring, learning and growing along the way.
Have any other self discovery quotes you’d add to the list? Which is your favorite? Leave a comment below and let us know – we’d love to hear from you!
You might also enjoy these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Finding Yourself
- Quotes About Taking Risks
- Quotes About Exploration
- Quotes About the Mind
- Quotes About Journeys
Originally Published: October 21, 2021
