100+ Inspirational Finding Yourself Quotes to Empower Your Journey

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

- Carl Jung

"If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."

- Dr. Maya Angelou

"Don’t spend all of your time trying to FIND yourself. Spend your time CREATING yourself into a person that you’ll be proud of."

- Sonya Parker

"Be who you are, and find yourself so you can be your own person and enjoy life with no regret."

- Bonnie Zackson Koury

"Each man’s life represents a road toward himself."

- Herman Hesse

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why."

- Mark Twain

"Finding oneself and one’s path is like waking up on a foggy day. Be patient, and presently the fog will clear and that which has always been there can be seen. The path is already there to follow."

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

"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

"Go find yourself first so you can also find me."

- Rumi

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"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

"To find yourself, think for yourself."

- Socrates

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self."

- Aldous Huxley

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

- Socrates

"Your real self may be hiding somewhere, look for it within, when you find yourself, you can freely be what you want to be."

- Michael Bassey

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power."

- Lao Tzu

"Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly."

- Epictetus

"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself."

- Maya Angelou

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

- Aristotle

"I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"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

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."

- Henry David Thoreau

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"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 only journey is the journey within."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

- William Shakespeare

"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are."

- Carl Jung

"The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself."

- Myles Munroe

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart."

- Carl Jung

"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind."

- Dr. Seuss

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom"

- Aristotle

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become"

- Carl Gustav Jung

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken"

- Oscar Wilde

"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

- Steve Jobs

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

- Carl Jung

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got"

- Janis Joplin

"The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has been before"

- Albert Einstein

"20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."

- Oscar Wilde

"Nothing happens until you decide. Make a decision and watch your life move forward."

- Oprah Winfrey

"You want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down."

- Toni Morrison

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

- Lao Tzu

"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."

- Natalie Goldberg

"Figure out what you’re good at and start helping other people with it; give it away. Pay it forward. Karma sort of works because people are very consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project."

- Naval Ravikant

"When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy."

- Dalai Lama

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"There is no doing in the world without being first. For me being, your presence, your connection to yourself, and that which is greater than yourself is far more important than what you do, but is also the thing that fuels what you do."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Give up being perfect for being authentic. Be who you are. Love who you are. Others will too."

- Hal Elrod

"What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

- Oprah Winfrey

"If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few."

- Shunryu Suzuki

"You know you're in trouble when you start to judge your self-worth by your net worth."

- Bill George

"To acquire true self power you have to feel beneath no one, be immune to criticism, and be fearless."

- Deepak Chopra

"There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen."

- Rumi

"Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

- Marie Curie

"We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."

- Marcel Proust

"But whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself."

- Kate Chopin

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."

- Daniel J. Boorstin

"Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-forming power treasured up in themselves."

- William Channing

"Traditional advice says to find your passion and decide where you want to be in 10 years and then go after it. But that is wrong because the world is constantly changing and we are constantly changing. Your identity is not found through introspection but rather emerges through experimentation."

- Reid Hoffman

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

- Dr. Viktor E. Frankl

"Rejection is merely a redirection; a course correction to your destiny."

- Bryant McGill

"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud"

- Coco Chanel

"You are your best thing"

- Toni Morrison

"The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens, you will always be with yourself"

- Diane von Furstenberg

"Your time is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life"

- Steve Jobs

"The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you"

- Stephanie Perkins

"You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody"

- Maya Angelou

"I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."

- Van Gogh

"Never blame anyone in your life. Good people give you happiness. Bad people give you experience. The worst people give you a lesson. And the best people give you memories."

- Zig Ziglar

"Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get."

- W. P. Kinsella

"She remembered who she was and the game changed"

- Rumi

"I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

- Joseph Campbell

"To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again."

- Pema Chodron

"Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen."

- Conan O’Brien

"It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy."

- Steve Jobs

"Never take counsel of your fears."

- GENERAL THOMAS J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON

"There is good in everything; it’s just how you choose to look at it. Everything that’s worth it has a price. There are sacrifices. Life is meant to be a challenge, because challenges are what make you grow. How boring it would be if we knew what was going to happen tomorrow!"

- Gisele Bundchen

"I don't fix problems. I fix my thinking then the problems fix themselves."

- Louise Hay

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

- Lao Tzu

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

- Agatha Christie

"Self-reflection is a humbling process. It’s essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things, then better yourself."

- Sonya Teclai

"I’m so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can’t play great music unless your heart’s been broken."

- Benjamin Zander

"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."

- Victor Hugo

"There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life."

- Tara Brach

"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."

- Sigmund Freud

"Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you."

- Walt Whitman

"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow."

- Orison Swett Marden

"Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."

- Cheryl Strayed

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

- Martin Luther

"You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will"

- Stephen King

"Don’t forget to fall in love with yourself first."

- Carrie Bradshaw

"Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

- Lucille Ball

"You alone are not enough. You have nothing to prove."

- Maya Angelou

"Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one content with oneself, one doesn’t need other’s approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her."

- Lao Tzu

"When you discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy; care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life."

- Jean Shinoda Bolen

"As I began to love myself, I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is authenticity."

- Charlie Chaplin

"Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept."

- Anna Taylor

"Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance."

- Brene Brown

"It is so important to take time for yourself and find clarity. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself."

- Diane Von Furstenberg

"Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it."

- Thaddeus Goals

"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

"If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life."

- James A. Michener

"I wasn’t searching for something or someone….I was searching for me."

- Carrie Bradshaw

"All this time I was finding myself, And I didn’t know I was lost."

- Avicci, Wake Me Up

"You’ve got to find yourself first. Everything else’ll follow."

- Charles de Lint

"To be curious about that which is not one’s concern while still in ignorance of oneself is absurd."

- Plato

"All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."

- James Thurber

"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

"You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, ‘I’m proud of what I am and who I am, and I’m just going to be myself."

- Mariah Carey

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes."

- Marcel Proust

"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery."

- Matthew Arnold

"Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not."

- Mooji

"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

"The longest journey is the journey inward."

- Doug Hammarskjold

"Change is the only constant in life."

- Heraclitus

"If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living."

- Gail Sheehy

"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."

- Albert Einstein

"Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change."

- Jim Rohn

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."

- Norman Vincent Peale

"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change their future by merely changing their attitude."

- Oprah Winfrey

"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."

- John Dewey

"You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in."

- Mandy Hale

"I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there."

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are."

- Brandon Sanderson

"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."

- Alysha Speer

"You can run away from yourself so often, and so much, just because the broken pieces of you cut your feet too deeply if you stay around for too long. But then what if someone were to come along and pick up those pieces for you? Then you wouldn't have to run away from yourself anymore. You could stop running. If someone sees you as something worth staying with— maybe you'll stay with yourself, too."

- C. JoyBell C.

"If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can fly like wind, like wings, when you awaken."

- Francesca Lia Block

"What's wrong with me? ... I might seem like the ideal student: homework always in early, every extra credit and extra curricular I can get my hands on, the good girl and the high achiever. But I realized something just now: it's not ambition, not entirely. It's fear. Because I don't know who I am when I'm not working, when I'm not focused on or totally consumed by a task. Who am I between the projects and the assignments, when there's nothing to do? I haven't found her yet and it scares me. Maybe that's why, for my senior capstone project this year, I decided to solve a murder."

- Holly Jackson

"People who fit don’t seek. The seekers are those that don’t fit."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Don't worry about finding your soul mate. Find yourself."

- Jason Evert

"No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine."

- Hermann Hesse

"I don’t want to be just one thing. I want to be brave and selfless and intelligent and honest and kind."

- Veronica Roth

"And I realized that some things just don't work that way. Life isn't a fairy tail. And the person you fall in love with doesn't always love you back. But that's ok, because at the very least it makes you stronger. And brings you to a place where you can fall in love with yourself. And that to me is more important than finding someone that only makes you complete when they are around, It's really about Finding the person that will teach you ALL the lessons you need to know ...so that you feel complete all by yourself."

- Bethany Brookbank

"While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek."

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

"You didn't just find a self out there waiting. You had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be."

- Brit Bennett

"I don't think you're lost. You're just searching for the thing that fills you with light."

- Roshani Chokshi

"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

"Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread."

- Richard Wright

"One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."

- Henry Miller

"It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too."

- H.W. Shaw

"Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be."

- Joseph Campbell

"Not all who wander are lost."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

- George A. Moore

"I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of."

- Michel de Montaigne

"Find yourself first-like yourself first-love yourself FIRST & friendship & love will naturally find YOU."

- Mandy Hale

"You’ve got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself."

- D. H. Lawrence

"Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it."

- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"Finding yourself is an enlightening experience. You become self-sufficient and do things for others without expectations of something in return. You are no longer needy and become utterly grateful for all the things people have done for you in the past."

- James Seaton

"Don’t worry about finding your soulmate. Find yourself."

- Jason Evert

"Finding yourself is a time of harmony because you develop that philosophy or belief system that will carry you throughout the rest of your life. When you love yourself, and who you are, you will savor and enjoy both life’s pain and pleasures."

- James Seaton

"We must fall in love with ourselves. I don’t like myself. I’m crazy about myself."

- Mae West

"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Be faithful to that which exists within yourself."

- André Gide

"Just be yourself, there is no one better."

- Taylor Swift

"If you’re waiting for your next love, look in the mirror."

- Bridgett Devoue

"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

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

- Albert Einstein

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear."

- Buddha

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

- Søren Kierkegaard

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."

- Andre Gide

"Why should we honor 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

"Travel far enough, you meet yourself."

- David Mitchell

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

- Charles Darwin

"Fight what you are today to become what you wanna be tomorrow."

- Sipho P. Nkosi

"In solitude, we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us."

- Virginia Woolf

"What you fear is inside yourself… The power to do great or terrible things."

- Liam Neeson

"I abandoned my disguise and became myself, free from fear or weakness or lust."

- Watchmen

"Don’t let pain define you, let it refine you."

- Tim Fargo

"First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others."

- Amos-Bronson-Alcott

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."

- May Sarton

"By discovering nature, you discover yourself."

- Maxime Lagacé

"Solitude is independence."

- Hermann Hesse

"In the end you don’t so much find yourself as you find someone who knows who you are."

- Robert Brault

"If you’re being ignored, that’s a good time to concentrate on finding yourself and creating your own mystery."

- Lykke Li

"Nature is a beautiful place to get lost and find yourself. A place which will never disappoint you and you will love it always. A place close to your heart where you can find peace. A place where you can feel lively and get to know a little more of you."

- Aksu

"Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness."

- Allen Ginsberg

"Learn to be alone and to like it. There’s nothing more freeing than that."

- Mandy Hale

"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."

- Albert Einstein

"Solitude sometimes is best society."

- John Milton

"You said you knew the perfect place to run to. A place that was empty of people, and buildings, and far, far away. A place covered in blood-red earth and sleeping life. A place longing to come alive again. It's a place for disappearing, you'd said, a place for getting lost... and for getting found. I'll take you there, you'd said. And I could say that I agreed."

- Lucy Christopher

"Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go."

- Mooji

"Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

- Pablo Picasso

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

- Oscar Wilde

"When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence."

- Tom Robbins

"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."

- Raymond Lindquist

"It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it."

- Criss Jami

"We are what we repeatedly do."

- Aristotle

"Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?"

- Theodore Roethke

"Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace."

- Nikki Rowe

"A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing."

- James Brown

"Happiness is contagious. Be a carrier."

- Robert Orben

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom."

- Thomas Carlyle

"I live by the third law of motion in physics, which is for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I know what I’m thinking, and therefore going to act on, is going to come back to me in a circular motion. Just like gravity, what goes up must come down. What propels the action is the intention. I don’t do anything without being fully clear about why I intend to do it. Because the intention is going to determine the reaction, the result, or the consequence in every circumstance."

- Oprah Winfrey

"For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed."

- Clifton Fadiman

"It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack."

- Germany Kent

"I have failed over and over and that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

"I will come back to you, I swear I will; And you will know me still. I shall be only a little taller Than when I went."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Hard days are the best because that's when champions are made."

- Gabby Douglas

"It doesn’t matter how many times you leave, it will always hurt to come back and remember what you once had and who you once were. Then it will hurt just as much to leave again, and so it goes over and over again. Once you’ve started to leave, you will run your whole life."

- Charlotte Eriksson

"I just want to be someone, to mean something to anyone…"

- Charlotte Eriksson

"If you never hear ‘no’, you’re not asking enough."

- Linda Babcock

"This is my day. This is my purpose. I’m not afraid to win."

- Kayla Harrison

"When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him."

- Amaka Imani Nkosazana

"Change your place, change your luck."

- Old Hebrew saying

"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do."

"Little by little, day by day, what's meant for you will find its way."

"If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found."