#identity

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."

"Treat everyone you meet as if they were you."

"Personal branding is important to me as a person. It’s also important to me as a non-person. I am a rock."

"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe."

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."

"While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life."

"Don't let others box you into their idea of what they think you should be. A confined identity is a miserable way to exist. Be you and live free. Trust that in living true to yourself, you will attract people that support and love you, just as you are."

"But there was a special kind of gift that came with embracing the chaos, even if I cursed most of the way. I'm convinced that, when everything is wiped blank, it's life 's way of forcing you to become acquainted with and aware of who you are now, who you can become. What is the fulfillment of your soul?"

"But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go."

"Sleep my little baby-ohSleep until you wakenWhen you wake you'll see the worldIf I'm not mistaken...Kiss a loverDance a measure,Find your nameAnd buried treasure...Face your lifeIts pain, Its pleasure,Leave no path untaken."

"Logos on designer clothes don't make me feel like I've got a strong personal brand. No clothes make the man. Even wearing no clothes I'm still me."

"Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice."[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]"

"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be."

"People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are."

"To get people to notice you, you must be unique. If I were invisible, everybody would see me for who I am as a person."

"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate."

"You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world."

"The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes."

"First and foremost: a human being. If your definition of yourself is something else; maybe you should reconsider."

"She fixed a smile that she hoped looked authentic. Pretending to be content continued to be hard work."