Be Yourself and Live On Purpose
Curated Collection of Quotes and Lyrics
Curator’s Note:
For decades, I’ve collected quotes in several places (notebooks, journals, Pinterest, goodreads, blogs) The collection is disjointed. I’m starting to see quotes of quotes. Some messages are diluted now that they swim in a sea of other very wise but unrelated words. About time to organize and to provide context.
This set encourages us to be comfortable in our own skin and, as an extension of that, to live your life with meaning. Not just purpose. Your purpose.
Be Yourself
“Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring. So I go back to being me.”
From the Very Wise Dr. Seuss…
“Today you are YOU. That is TRUER than true. There is NO ONE alive who is YOUER than YOU!”
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose!”
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight — and never stop fighting.”
― E. E. Cummings
“It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone.”
― Hans F Hansen
“Sometimes I have to remind myself that I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.”
“Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.”
― Brenda Ueland
“There is a vitality. a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham
“There is nothing more satisfying than being loved for who you are and nothing more painful than being loved for who you’re not but pretending to be.”
— Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation
“Remind yourself. Nobody built like you. You design yourself.”
― Jay Z
“To thine own self be true.”
― Shakespeare
“Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself….His task was to discover his own destiny — not an arbitrary one — and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.”
― Hermann Hesse
Intermission:
So Fly performed by Elle Varner
Unwritten performed by Natasha Bedingfield
Live On Purpose
One day, Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” was his response.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
― from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“There is a path for each of us. When we are on our right path, we have a surefootedness. We know the next right action―Although not necessarily what is just around the bend.”
― Julia Cameron
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“Do not chase people. Work hard and be you. The right people who belong in your life will come find you and stay. Do your thing.”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― William Shakespeare
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
― The number one regret of the dying, reported by a palliative nurse in The Guardian
“When it comes time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
― Steve Jobs
Words from George Bernard Shaw
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
“The purpose of life is to know, and to recreate, Who You Are.”
― Neale Donald Walsch
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— C.G. Jung
“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.”
― Shakti Gawain
“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“Even when learning is hard, it is not bitter when you feel that it is worth having, that you can master it, that practicing what you learned will express who you are and help you achieve what you desire.”
―Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“…there are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time―longer than most people imagine….you’ve got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people….Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it…it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love―staying in love.”
― Angela Duckworth, GRIT
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”
― Margaret Young
“Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.”
― Joseph Campbell
“Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It’s in our hands.”
― Cathy Better
“Whatever you are, be a good one”
― Abraham Lincoln
“When someone says: “So what’s next?” As in, “how are you going to top that?” You don’t have to have an answer. The answer can be: “This.” Your life doesn’t have to be about impressing other people or a successive series of achievements.”
— Ryan Holiday
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
— Gandhi
While quotes can be overused, I can’t escape their grip. When delivered at the right time under the right circumstances, they can inspire.
I’m sure some of you have some great additions to this collection. I invite you to respond with your own set.
And if you’re inspired to write a story, tell your story.
Updated and edited 8/22/2016 from original post on donndurante.com
