Thomas Merton Quotes

You've always made the mistake of being yourself.

I want to be more myself. Sometimes it takes awhile to find your voice.

You cannot fail at being yourself. A cat doesn't try to be a tiger, and you shouldn't try to be something you aren't. You are a process, not a product. Your job is to discover what you are and create that creature. You still won't be perfect, but success isn't about perfection-it is about authenticity. You are a success if you are being your real, authentic self.

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

It's always important to be yourself.

Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice.

One of the basic laws of human existence is: find yourself, know yourself, be yourself.

Being myself didn't work. Being someone else didn't work. Maybe I just wasn't meant to have friends.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

Please, please, PLEASE be yourself. If you catch yourself not, take a step back.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

To me, the most interesting part of 'True Blood' is that the entire crux of the show is based on identity and finding your true identity.

People always tell me, 'Reinvent yourself, re-this, re-whatever.' I haven't reinvented myself. It's an honest evolution. I've always been authentic.

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

You have to assert something about yourself in order to be yourself.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

What is interesting about me isn't that I am a mother, it is who I am. I love my family, but if I just talk to you about being a mother, it's boring. I am sorry, but it's reducing who I really am, and it's really boring.

Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self.

It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.