Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

I don't know how to not become every person I walk by.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me.

You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.

You can't ever put your self-definition in the hands of somebody who meets you for 15 minutes.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.

Sometimes we become bound by other people's thoughts because we are not sure about ourselves.

Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed-- borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.

Everything you think you're supposed to feel even, or do. When it doesn't match up with what everything that the culture is telling you to do, you feel like a failure.

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.

It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.

I am sick of being the victim of trends I reflect but don't even understand.

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.

When something goes into the world, you immediately begin to develop another perspective on yourself, another identity.

Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us.

Maybe other people's ideas of us are truer than our own.

I was like, "Everybody sees my characters. Nobody sees me!"

Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.

I think the desire to be with someone beautiful...I just had such a different experience growing up. To be in a position where you're lauded for things that you don't own - and don't think of yourself as - it's so bizarre.

It's very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It's much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I'm going to believe what I like, but I'll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

We wear a lot of labels in our lives, and it's so very easy to be defined by them. We have grown somehow accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a size eight or a size fourteen, as a capricorn or a taurus, as single or in love.