John Fowles Quotes

Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.

There's nothing worse than betraying yourself.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals--though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt--but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I--in complacent adjustment to alien demands.

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.

I have to live in the truth that this is who I am. That's what I need to focus on.

You can't betray yourself too often, or you become somebody else.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

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

Questions about who we are and who we want t be are increasingly prominent in our society. We have left behind Soviet ideology and there will be no return.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Your self is sacred; be true to it.

If you don't know yourself, you don't know your nature. If you don't know your nature, you don't know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.

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

I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.

How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!

Truly know thyself, and to thine own self be true.

I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.

To be authentic is to stop pretending to be what think you are, because you are not.

Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you'll find in this world.

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

We rigidify our self-image to portray a certain identity to the world, which is one of the key impediments to authenticity.

You can't lose yourself.