It seems to me that at the bottom each person is asking,
'Who am I really?
How can I get in touch with this real self,
underlying all my surface behavior?
How can I become myself?'
-Carl Rogers

Before we can become who we really are,

we must become conscious of the fact

that the person who we think we are, here and now,

is at best, an imposter and a stranger.

-Thomas Merton

The thing that is really hard,
and really amazing,
is to give up on being perfect
and beginning the work on becoming yourself.
-Anna Quindlen

If I have just one aim,
And that aim is to be myself,
Then I am bound to discover joy,
True joy, eternal joy.
-Chinmoy

Man's main task in life
is to give birth to himself,
to become what he potentially is.
-Erich Fromm

To be what we are,
and to become what we are capable of becoming,
is the only end in life.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

The whole point of being alive
is to evolve into the complete person
you were intended to be.
-Oprah Winfrey

Ultimately, each of us has to define who we are individually
and then do the very best job we can to grow into it.
-Hilary Rodham Clinton

Just as you would not neglect seeds that you planted
with the hope they will bear vegetables and fruits and flowers,
so you must attend to and nourish the garden of your becoming.
-Jean Houston

If a man wants to be
of the greatest possible value to his fellow creatures,
let him begin the long solitary task of perfecting himself.
-Robertson Davies

We are constantly invited
to be who we are.
-Henry David Thoreau

What is man's first duty?
The answer's brief:
To be himself.
-Henrik Ibsen

My role is to fully express my Self.
-Carleton Whitehead

What we have to do
is be what we are.
-Thomas Merton

All you can do in life
is be who you are.
-Rita Mae Brown

There is no place so awake and alive
as the edge of becoming.
-Sue Monk Kidd

It is the chiefest point of happiness
that a man is willing to be what he is.
-Desiderius Erasmus

It is best to be oneself,
imperial, plain and true.
-Robert Browning

Be who you are
and be that well.
-Saint Francis de Sales

Do not wish to be anything
but what you are,
and try to be that perfectly.
-Saint Francis de Sales

Be satisfied to be what you are,
but do not be satisfied to be less than all that you are.
-Christian Larson

Resolve to be thyself.
-Matthew Arnold

If I am not I
who will be?
-Henry David Thoreau

If I try to be like him

who will be like me?

-Yiddish Proverb

There are no precedents:
You are the first You that ever was.
-Christopher Morley

Be yourself.
Who is better qualified?
-Frank J. Giblin II

Be yourself;
everybody else is taken.
-Oscar Wilde

Be yourself,
that's all there is of you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you come right down to it,
all you have is yourself.
Yourself is a sun
with a thousand fires in your belly.
The rest is nothing.
-Pablo Picasso

I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character
would be to seek out that particular mental or moral attitude
in which, when it came upon him,
he felt himself most deeply and intensely alive and active,
At such moments there is a voice inside
which speaks and says, "This is is the real me!"
-William James

What should I be
but just what I am?
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Learn to... be what you are,
and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
-Henri Frederic Amiel

Be aware of what is in you.
Announce it, pronounce it,
produce it and give birth to it.
-Meister Eckhart

Find out who you are
and do it on purpose.
-Dolly Parton

Learn who you are
and act accordingly.
-Pindar

Be faithful to that which exists in yourself.
-Andre Gide

You have to find yourself first
and everything else follows.
-Lin Yutang

It takes courage to grow up
and become who you really are.
-e e cummings

What you must dare
is to be yourself.
-Dag Hammarskjold

The easiest thing in the world is to be you.
The most difficult thing to be
is what other people want you to be.
Don't let them put you in that position.
-Leo Buscaglia

The hardest battle you're ever going to fight
is the battle to be just you.
-Leo Buscaglia

I must be myself.
I cannot break myself any longer
for you, or you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be yourself,
no matter what they say.
-Sting

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

We only become what we are
by the radical and deep-seated refusal
of that which others have made us.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

Everybody must learn this lesson somewhere -
that it costs something to be what you are.
-Shirley Abbott

Not till we are lost,
in other words, not till we have lost the world,
do we begin to find ourselves,
and realize where we are
and the infinite extent of our relations.
-Henry David Thoreau

You cannot find yourself by going into the past.
You can find yourself by coming into the present.
-Eckhart Tolle

Be what you are.
This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.
-Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

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

The greatest thing in the world
is to know how to be oneself.
-Michel de Montaigne

Nothing can make you sure of yourself
but the self you really are.
-Vernon Howard

The whole of life is like
playing the game of hide and seek,
in which you must find your real self.
-Meher Baba

One's own self is well hidden from ones' own self;
of all the mines and treasures it is the last to be dug up.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

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

I do not presuppose myself,
because I am every moment just positing or creating myself.
-Max Stirner

I am daily making myself what I am.
-Robert Thurman

Human beings are not born
once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them,
but...life obliges them over and over again
to give birth to themselves.
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

No single event can awaken with us 

a stranger totally unknown to us.

To live is to be slowly reborn.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

To be born again
is not to become somebody else,
but to become ourselves.
-Thomas Merton

Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
-Thomas Merton

We must each find our own path
and discover for ourselves
the joy of being what we are.
-Laurence G Boldt

You become only who are always were.
-Fernando Pessoa

Man is always something more
than what he knows of himself.
He is not what he is simply once and for all,
but is a process.
-Karl Jaspers

It doesn't happen at at once...
You become...
It takes a long time.
-Margery Williams

Life is about growing to be
who you were most meant to be,
the best version of yourself.
-Oprah Winfrey

It takes a lot of rehearsing
for a man to be himself.
-William Saroyan

Be the only you that's truly you on earth.
-Ray Bradbury

When a person is vibrating his own note
which is according to his particular evolution,
then he is himself,
then he is tuned to the pitch for which he is made,
the pitch in which he ought to be
and in which he naturally feels comfortable.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

When you know who you are,
and live it,
you are at home in the world.
-Arden Mahlberg

What greater pleasure is there
than to find myself the one thing that I ought to be,
and the whole thing that I ought to be?
-Henry Muso

It is never too late to be
what you might have become.
-George Eliot

The full blossoming of maturity
is the best fruit that life can offer.
The need to become is over.
-Vanda Scaravelli

The privilege of a lifetime
is being who you are.
-Joseph Campbell

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum.
At that time you must accept yourself.
It is not anymore what you will become.
It is what you are and always will be.
-John Fowles

I am wedded to who I am.
-Burton Silverman

I am myself all the time.
-Ralph Lauren

I never change,
I simply become more myself.
-Joyce Carol Oates

As long as I shall live
I shall always be
My Self - and no other,
Just Me.
-Walter de la Mare

There's always a certain peace in being what one is,
and being that completely.
-Ugo Betti

Belonging to oneself -
the whole essence of life lies in that.
-Ivan Turgenev

So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself -
this seems to me
the highest attainment possible to a human being.
-Henrik Ibsen

Having achieved and accomplished love...
man...has become himself,
his tale is told.
-D. H. Lawrence

No creature is fully itself till it is,
like the dandelion,
opened in the bloom of pure relationship to the sun,
the entire living cosmos.
-D. H. Lawrence

Once a man has found himself
there is nothing in this world that he can lose.
And once he has understood the humanity in himself,
he will understand all human beings.
-Stefan Zweig

The only man who adds to the spiritual wealth of humanity
 is the one who has the force to become what he is.
-Elie Faure

He who would lead a Christ life
is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself.
-Oscar Wilde

So let us hear Eternal Wisdom's call:
By thyself truly, and thou art the All.
-Frithjof Shuon

Self-realization
is the greatest service we can render the world.
-Ramana Maharshi