Who To Be Quotes

He put his arms about himself as if he were cold. I do not know who to be without him. ~ Cassandra Clare

If Glendower had not saved Gansey's life, he did not know who to thank, or who to be, or how to live. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

To be brief, I say that since Fortune changes and men stand fixed in their old ways, they are prosperous so long as there is congruity between them, and the reverse when there is not. Of this, however, I am well persuaded, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious. For Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid in their approaches. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The key to life is to figure out who to be the batboy for. ~ Warren Buffett

And in another life, if I ever had a choice about who to be, maybe I would have been like him. ~ Alexandra Christo

The voice I finally heard that day was my own--the girl I'd locked away at ten years old, the girl I was before the world told me who to be--and she said: Here I am. I'm taking over now. ~ Glennon Doyle

I have learnt something today or perhaps today's knowledge has confirmed what I probably have been noticing for a while. Maturity cannot be taught, you cannot teach a boy how to be a man or girl who to be a lady. They can act it, but until they understand the essence of being a man or absolving ladyship, they will never truly become matured. Maturity is the mental state of understanding the 'why' of every life lesson you have ever been taught. Thus, it is a gradual process. ~ Magnus Nwagu Amudi

In theater, you have a rehearsal period and you know just who to be. ~ Marcia Gay Harden

When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be. ~ Ellen Page

Love is not me being who you want. Your definition is a whirlpool trying to suck me in and I'm drowning. Don't you see?...It's time...Time you stop telling me who to be, how to live. This is my portrait. You chose your canvas. Let me choose mine. ~ Nikki Grimes

I don't have a message. You already have all these people telling you how to live, who to be, what to wear, what to drive, what drugs to do - I just want people to see what I see. ~ Vince Staples

When we attach ourselves to national identities, then we enter into a cycle of conflict. I didn't choose where I was born or who to be or what people would call me. ~ Ashraf Barhom

I understood. Being from a place where a few facts are enough to define you, where a few habits can fill a life, causes a unique kind of shame. We'd had small lives, populated by a longing from something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams. So we'd come here, where life needed no elaboration and others would tell us who to be. ~ Kevin Powers

Go straight to God, and dump it right at His feet. You go down with it if you have to. Then leave it there and go on and do what you know is right now. That other is done. It doesn't make you who you are. It just teaches you who to be. ~ Nancy Rue

So you dare tell me who to be ~ Sara Bareilles

Each queen was once a girl like you; told who to be and what to do. Not pretty, not pleasing, far too rough. Lacking, less than, not enough. Till wounded subjects, anguished dead, mattered more than things that others said. Then like a flag, her will unfold. Go now girl, remake the world! ~ Jennifer Donnelly

They way I walk now
you'd have a hard time recognising me,
on these streets
where I once imagined walking with you.
Hand in hand,
like we always did,
and it never mattered where we were going
because it was all just fine.
I was always fine.
But they rest restlessly in my pockets now,
in a new town,
on these new streets,
and it's heavy to stay standing
for my body is half the size
when you're gone
and these buildings are tall and old and beautiful
and I wonder what secrets they hold.
How to stand so proud after so many years
because I'm still young but I feel worn
and I get through the days on too much caffeine and mood altering chemicals
to stay awake long enough to make the poetry come alive.
I fall asleep on the floor with the music still playing
when my neighbour leaves for the office
and I'm jealous.
I wonder what it's like to go outside and know where to go,
know where you want to end up
and just simply go there.
I've been making lists of things I want to do,
where to go
and who to be,
now that you're gone,
and it's nice and all,
it's just …
I'd rather write it with you,
and go there with you.
Be things
with you.

There were days when I still put on make up
in case you'd come back,
but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rain,
eat when I can and sleep when I can ~ Charlotte Eriksson

In the real world, they told you who to be, not the other way around. ~ Rhoda Belleza

Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop ~ George Orwell

You'll never be a seafarer if you think that way, my lord.

I don't want to be a seafarer.

Of course you don't. ~ Samantha Shannon

People have asked me why I seem to have no fear. It's apparently that which stops so many people from doing what they need to make their life happier. Well, I don't really have the answer, but maybe if one isn't afraid of ghosts or, if fact, death itself, which is the worst thing that can happen to a human being, there isn't much else left to be frightened of. ~ Lucinda Riley

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

DOVES People want you to be happy. Don't keep serving them your pain! If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves. WHEN ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

You okay?" I ask him.
He nods. "I'll live. Hey, it's your turn."
"My turn for what?"
"I told you my deepest, darkest secret." He tilts his head at me. "Now you've got to tell me one of yours."
"One of my secrets?"
"Yeah. C'mon, I know you've got a bunch of 'em."
"Oh, I do, huh?"
"You're too perfect not to be hiding something," he says, and my cheeks flood with heat.
Me, too perfect? He's got to be kidding. Only…he looks serious. And earnest. I look down at the camera in my hand, studying it, and then back up at him. I can't explain it, but I suddenly want to tell him. At least, I want to tell someone, and he's here, a captive audience. I hesitate a second or two, then blurt it out before I lose my nerve.
"I want to go to film school." I meet his gaze, his eyes round with surprise. "In New York. ~ Kristi Cook

We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

No one can stand up against the authority of truth, and the evil of falsehood is to be fought with enlightening speculation. ~ Ibn Khaldun

I don't wish to be successful but I definitely wish to be successful in helping someone, sometime for something good. ~ Manasa Rao

His scowl returned. "Why, if they're supposed to be Greek, are all of them speaking with an English accent?"
She laughed. "Didn't you know that British is, like, the universal 'foreign' language in Hollywood? They use it in any movie where they want to have a foreign feel to it, regardless of where it's set ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Desire inspires us to be our very best. ~ Lynn Cullen

I'm a nice girl from the Detroit area - Livonia, to be exact. ~ Judy Greer

Make it your habit not to be critical about small things. ~ Edward Everett Hale

The American people expect the president of the United States to be prepared to support action to protect the people of this nation. And I know Donald Trump will. ~ Mike Pence

One thing I always say is being a great chef today is not enough - you have to be a great businessman. ~ Wolfgang Puck

I think more people want to be rappers than anything else. ~ Nas

Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen

I've tried to be active in civic organizations as well as the Church. ~ Margaret D. Nadauld

How can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first and act proper? ~ William Golding

You lent me The Golden Compass! It's full of jinni trickery, and you were angry at me when I told you that made it dangerous! Why do you get mad when religion tells you that the things you want to be true are true?
When it's true, it's not fun anymore. All right? When it's true it's scary. ~ G. Willow Wilson

I don't believe in lowest common denominators. Our focus has been on delivering value. We're rarely going to be the cheapest theater in a market. We strive to be the best. ~ Gerry Lopez

Well, I need to be frightened on a regular basis. ~ Rhys Ifans

It is one thing to be brave in front of others, perhaps for fear of being branded a coward and becoming diminished in their eyes, but another entirely to be brave when there is nobody to witness your courage. The latter is an elemental bravery, a strength of spirit and character. ~ John Connolly

Having your fiscal house in order and having a more manageable macro-economic future is going to be very useful in creating growth. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Hollow Horn Bear knew that to be leader and adviser of his people he must be honest and reliable, and that his word once given in promise must never be taken back. He knew that he must be a man of will-power, standing for the right no matter what happened to him personally; that he must have strength of purpose, allowing no influence to turn him from doing what was best for the tribe. He must be willing to serve his people without thought of pay. He must be utterly unselfish and kind-hearted to the old and poor and stand ready to give to those in need. Above all, he must be unafraid to deal equal justice to all. ~ Luther Standing Bear

I never needed this race, or a hashtag, or the king to be a queen. I was born royalty. All I had to do was pick up my crown. ~ Leah Johnson

Maybe I couldn't make it. Maybe I don't have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don't know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I'm sick of the masquerade. I'm sick of pretending eternal youth. I'm sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I'm sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I'm sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I'm sick of the Powder Room. I'm sick of pretending that some fatuous male's self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I'm sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I'm sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate. ~ Germaine Greer

There is, to be sure, no evil without something good. ~ Pliny The Elder

I don't want my life to imitate art, I want my life to be art. ~ Carrie Fisher

It is our emptiness and lowliness that God needs and not our plenitude. These are a few of the ways we can practice humility:
Speak as little as possible of oneself.
Mind one's own business.
Avoid curiosity.
Do not want to manage other people's affairs.
Accept contradiction and correction cheerfully.
Pass over the mistakes of others.
Accept blame when innocent.
Yield to the will of others.
Accept insults and injuries.
Accept being slighted, forgotten, and disliked.
Be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Do not seek to be specially loved and admired.
Never stand on one's dignity.
Yield in discussion even when one is right.
Choose always the hardest. ~ Mother Teresa

To be over much facetious is the accomplishment of courtiers and blemish of the wise. ~ Saadi

On thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held more for him than just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen. ~ Charles Frazier

It is important to view a recipe book as one that you use daily and what we in our family call "a living book" - a book that you use all the time, not just read once and discard on the shelf. It is in a sense a spell book, a book of magical enchantments, to be consulted, used and altered as needed. ~ The Silver Elves

I'm in a funny position: I've been in one band in my life and that was with my brother. As incredible as that has been, I feel like I'm missing out a little bit on being in a real rock band - or how I imagine being in a real rock band to be. It's like being in a street gang: you all wear the same leather jacket or whatever. ~ Eleanor Friedberger

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself. ~ Havelock Ellis

The spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, begins betimes. ~ William Shakespeare

The important thing is not to be masochistic. Women are so hard on themselves. Don't do that. No one is keeping score. ~ Simon Doonan

[ ... ] A society that drives its members to desperate solutions is a non-viable society, a society to be replaced. ~ Kathy Acker

O God, I confess I am not worthy to rock that little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of a child and its mother. How is it that I without any merit have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? Oh, how gladly will I do so. Though the duty should be even more insignificant and despised, neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor will distress me for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life. ~ Simone Weil

A man shrinks or expands into the degree and nature of his ambition. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers. ~ Neel Burton

Sylvia wanted me to resent Hannah because she was dating Dylan. She wanted me to be jealous of her because Hannah had the affection and attention of the only guy I'd ever really liked. Sylvia had no freakin' clue. I couldn't allow myself to begin hating Hannah Swift. If I started down that path, I'd never, ever stop. ~ Viv Daniels

I've read a lot of scripts and I'm really luck to be able to play a woman who's funny and can be charming and has a mischievous side to her as well. I'm really lucky. ~ Cobie Smulders

The world is getting so reality-driven these days. It seems to be accelerating exponentially. But it's a dangerous game for a lot of people. ~ Keith Urban