Mary MacLane Quotes

Meet the most important living person! That person is you.

I don't find myself intriguing.

All my work is not personal - I've been trying to get away from that into the true self underneath all the tastes and things we think make up a self.

Nobody else can tell you what you are.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.

Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

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.

Carving out an identity for yourself is important so I'm trying to do that as well.

If I look to see what I ever did that, for all I now know, some other man might not have done, I am utterly unable to discover the certainly unique deed.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've celebrated by giving it a real name. My self.

I don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

All I know is myself and I don't plan on changing that.

It's important that a person doesn't lose track of himself.

I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.

The only thing a man knows is himself.

I stare at the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not.

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?