Echoes

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.

Become what you are.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

What does your conscience say? — You should become who you are.

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

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

When you are content to be simply yourself, everybody will respect you.

It is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style — all mannerisms, tricks, adornments.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

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 important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.