Alain de Botton Quotes

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

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.

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.

He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

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

The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away; your individuality, your individual arises. To have a personality is hypocrisy. To be an individual is your birthright.

Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real. -Going Bovine

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

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

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.

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.

As I grow older, I feel like my authentic self has been able to shine through more and more, and people can see that.

We must at times search our own souls and discover what we really are. Our real character, much as we would wish, cannot be hidden.

And the question is, which one is really "you.

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.

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

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

Find your true self. The old question, asked in many ages, "Who am I?" Once you figure out who am I, and you know who am I, then you have that knowledge of self.

The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.