Quotes on Being Yourself

When one is pretending the entire body revolts.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

Embrace the glorious mess that you are

Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.

I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it.

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

Style is wearing an evening dress to McDonald's, wearing heels to play football. It is personality, confidence and seduction.

It gets better. It seems hard, you know, I think being different is always gonna be a tough climb. There's always gonna be people that are scared of it. But at the end of the day you give those bullies, those people, that are so ignorant, if you give them the power to affect you, you're letting them win. And they don't deserve that. What you're doing by being yourself is you're keeping it real, and you're being really brave.

A poem should not mean but be.

There will always be somebody more successful, more beautiful, more talented. You have to realize, you're not running their race. You're running your race.

I started to repeat to myself "If I'm not where I want to be, it's because I'm not good enough... yet." Which meant it was up to me.

Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.

Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive

Ones real life is often the life that one does not lead.