James Stephens Quotes

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

You are what you've been looking for. The answer is always in you alone. There is nothing in the external world. For the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world.

Losing It Some days I think I'm losing my mind. What seems so clear most of the time becomes a big question mark. Am I really the way I percieve myself, or is the person others see the truth of me? I wait for answers, but inside I know I have to go out and find them. And answers like knowledge, are not always where we first look for them.

Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.

It's so easy and comfortable to lie to yourself. Success is to become who you are. I think Hollywood thinks in a totally different way. But I think that as a human being, and not only an actress, that's really how you lead a successful life.

I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control. I feel that what I'm thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!

That’s where the dreams end: with the realization that it doesn’t matter where I am, whether I think I’m a woman or a fish or something in-between. I’ve never really left the pond. I still can’t breathe.

I think anybody who's working in a creative medium is working partially with their conscious mind, partially with their unconscious mind. So, my unconscious mind may be a little more distorted and violent than I am aware of.

What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

It is myself I have never met whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

How far have I to go to find you in whom I have already arrived.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

When you think the night has seen your mind, That inside your twisted and unkind, Let me stand to show that you are blind. Please put down you hands cause I see you. I'll be you mirror.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

What you don't want to know about yourself wants to be known, which is why it keeps 'showing up' at your door unannounced!

I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out.

I don't think secrets agree with me, I feel rumpled up in mind since you told me that.

Rushing around, hoping to find peace of mind anywhere other than within yourself, is like looking for your heart in someone else's body!

How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.

Are you prepared to take a dive into the deep end of my head?

Whatever we refuse to recognize about ourselves has a way of rearing its head and making itself known when we least expect it.

It takes a long time to fully become who you are.