Shusaku Endo Quotes

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are.

Although our package of skin and bones looks very convincing, it is a mask, an illusion, disguising our true self, which has no limitations.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life.

The thing that surprises me most is, you cannot change who you are.

It is when I am working that the real me comes out - that is when I am the most real and honest.

Learn what you are and be such.

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

I'm not what I make.

Anyone who knows who God made them to be will never try to be someone else.

We need to forget what we think we are, so that we can really become what we are.

We are so defined by how people see us. We're a very materialistic culture. We're a very image-driven culture. What if that goes away and you are left with, God help us, what, indeed, is your essential self?

The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.

You know it's real when you are who you think you are

Who is that girl I see, staring straight back at me? When will my reflection show who I am inside?

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

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

You have to self-reflect. If you forget who you actually are, then what's the use of even looking in the mirror.

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

The cynicism that you have is not your real soul.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.