110 Best Inspirational Quotes About Finding Yourself

In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, it’s easy to lose sight of your true self. The pressures of societal expectations, career aspirations, and personal relationships can sometimes blur the path to finding your authentic self. However, within this collection of 110 inspirational quotes about finding yourself, you will find a diverse array of perspectives on self-discovery and connecting with your inner self. From renowned philosophers and poets to contemporary thinkers, these quotes encapsulate the collective wisdom of those who have embarked on the journey of finding themselves before you.

As you review these quotes, think about how they can help you find your authentic self.  Whether you’re new at self-exploration and self-discovery, or seeking reaffirmation, these inspirational quotes are here to support you, as well as provide a gentle reminder that the journey to finding yourself is a profoundly beautiful endeavor.

​Key Takeaways

• These words of wisdom serve as beacons of light, guiding you through the process of finding yourself and offering insights, encouragement, and enlightenment that resonate with you along your journey. 
• Spending time to find yourself is an investment in your own personal development, well-being, and the creation of a more authentic and fulfilling life. It provides the foundation for living in alignment with your true values and aspirations.
• These inspirational quotes from a diverse group of leaders offer a diverse array of perspectives about self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-acceptance to help you find your authentic self and true happiness.  

What Does Finding Yourself Mean?

Finding yourself is a multifaceted and personal journey that involves self-discovery, self-awareness, and understanding your identity, values, and purpose in life. It goes beyond the surface level of day-to-day activities and explores the deeper layers of who you are as an individual.

This process often involves reflection, introspection, and a willingness to explore different aspects of your personality, interests, and beliefs.

Finding yourself also encompasses discovering your passions, strengths, and weaknesses. It can involve questioning societal expectations or norms and aligning your life with what truly resonates with your authentic self.

This journey is not static; it evolves over time as you grow, learn, and experience new things.

Ultimately, finding yourself is about creating a sense of authenticity and alignment between your inner self and the way you live your life. It’s a quest for personal fulfillment, purpose, and a deeper understanding of what brings meaning to your existence.

Why Should You Spend Time Finding Yourself

Spending time finding yourself is an investment in your own personal development, well-being, and the creation of a more authentic and fulfilling life. It provides the foundation for living in alignment with your true values and aspirations.

It helps you make informed decisions that are aligned with your authentic self; it helps you embrace your purpose in life; it provides a clear framework for making choices that are aligned with your values; and it even helps you develop more meaningful connections with others.

Finding yourself is an important part of your personal growth and contributes to a more enriched life that leads to confidence and resilience. Thus, you are able to step outside of your comfort zone and explore greater possibilities in life.

Now let’s get to the quotes that will inspire you to spend time finding yourself!

Inspirational Quotes About Finding Yourself

1. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
2. “In the end you don’t so much find yourself as you find someone who knows who you are.” – Robert Brault
3. “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.” – Lao Tzu
4. “When you know yourself, you are empowered. When you accept yourself, you are invincible.” – Tina Lifford
5. “To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates
6. “Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.” – Epictetus
7. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
8. “You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path.” — Mandy Hale  
9. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw ^​
10. “I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ^​
11. “Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.” ― Brandon Sanderson
12. “Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.” ― Mandy Hale
13. “It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.” ― Germany Kent
14. “Don’t worry about finding your soul mate. Find yourself.” ― Jason Evert
15. “When God takes out the trash, don’t go digging back through it. Trust Him.” ― Amaka Imani Nkosazana
16. “When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.” ― Tim Robbins
17. “I don’t want to be just one thing. I want to be brave and selfless and intelligent and honest and kind.” ― Veronica Roth
18. “While you’ll feel compelled to charge forward it’s often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru
19. “You didn’t just find a self out there waiting. You had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.” ― Brit Bennett
20. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

Quotes about Self Discovery that will Inspire You

21. “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” — Aldous Huxley
22. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” — Henry David Thoreau
23. “Before you find out who you are, you have to figure out who you aren’t.” — Iyanla Vanzant
24. “The first step to becoming what God made you to be is to stop worrying about what others want you to be.” — Rick Warren
25. “Find out who you are and be that person. That’s what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come.” — Ellen DeGeneres
26. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs
27. Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” — Dr. Seuss
28. “I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life.” — Alison Goodman
29. “Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter.” — Bernard Baruch
30. “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” — Carl Jung
31. “Genuine relationships depend first on a healthy relationship with ourselves.” — Sonia Choquette
32. “If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.” — Dale Carnegie
33. “Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.” — Henry David Thoreau
34. “Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.” — Rachel Naomi Remen
35. “Do what you will while you’re able, find what it is that you seek.” — Xavier Rudd
36. “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” — Hugh Prather
37. “When you know yourself, you are empowered. When you accept yourself, you are invincible” – Tina Lifford
38. “To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates
39. “I feel the older I get, the more I’m learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it’s all about finding yourself.” – Ringo Starr
40. “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” – Lao Tzu

More Finding Yourself Quotes

41. ​“Breaking apart from someone you love very much can be unbearably painful, but finding yourself again can be a beautiful thing if you do your solitude right.” – Grace Chatto
42. “You’ve got to find yourself first. Everything else will follow.” – Charles de Lint
43. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
44. “Don’t worry about finding your soulmate. Find yourself.” – Jason Evert
45. “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” – Maya Angelou
46. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
47. “Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” – Richard Wright
48. “When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.” – Carl Sagan
49. ​“You have no need to travel anywhere. Journey within yourself, enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendour of your own light.” – Rumi
50. “Be who you are, and find yourself so you can be your own person and enjoy life with no regret.” – Bonnie Zackson Koury
51. ​“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” – Thomas Browne
52. “Your real self may be hiding somewhere, look for it within, when you find yourself, you can freely be what you want to be.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
53. “All this time I was finding myself, And I didn’t know I was lost.” – Avicci
54. “As I began to love myself, I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is authenticity.” – Charlie Chaplin
55. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.” – Henry David Thoreau
56. “We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too.” – Kristin Martz
57. “When you discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy; care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.” – Jean Shinoda Bolen
58. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant
59. “And into the forest, I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir
60. “When you’re telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn’t know.” – Roy Conli

Get Inspired: Discover Yourself Quotes

61. “You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, ‘I’m proud of what I am and who I am, and I’m just going to be myself.” – Mariah Carey
62. ​“The show is definitely not just about weight-loss physically. It’s more about finding yourself. It’s really funny because I realized at one of our table reads that ‘Huge’ was really about the weight that we carry around mentally.” – Raven Goodwin
63. “Discovering who you are today is the first step to being who you will be tomorrow.” – Mustapha Lanre Idreez
64. “We must take adventures in order to know where we truly belong.” – Unknown
65. ​“Finding yourself is an enlightening experience. You become self-sufficient and do things for others without expectations of something in return. You are no longer needy and become utterly grateful for all the things people have done for you in the past.” – James Seaton
66. “You have no need to travel anywhere. Journey within yourself, enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light.” – Rumi
67. “We must fall in love with ourselves. I don’t like myself. I’m crazy about myself.” – Mae West
68. “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” — Jean de la Fontaine 
69. “Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.” – Unknown
70. “Pay attention to what makes you feel energized, connected, and stimulated. Follow your intuition, do what you love, and you will do more than succeed. You will soar.” — Oprah Winfrey 
71. “Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” — Hermann Hesse
72. “Sometimes things fall apart, so that better things can fall together.” — Marilyn Monroe 
73. “You’ve got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself.”  — D. H. Lawrence
74. “​It’s a life’s journey of finding ourselves, finding our power, and living for yourself, not for everyone else.” — Mariska Hargitay 
75. “One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.” ― Blaise Pascal​
76. ​“Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitter…” — Pablo Neruda
77. ”Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.” — Oscar Wilde
78. “You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.” — Eckhart Tolle
79. “I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.” — Muhammad Ali
80. ​“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” — Dolly Parton

Finding Yourself Quotes to Discover Who You Are

81. “The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery.” — Aristotle
82. “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ― Marianne Williamson
83. “’Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” ― Emily McDowell
84. “You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.”  — Eleanor Roosevelt 
85. “Your real self may be hiding somewhere, look for it within, when you find yourself, you can freely be what you want to be.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
86. “Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.” — Benjamin Franklin
87. “The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens, you will always be with yourself. You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.” — Diane von Furstenberg
88. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
89. “Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.” — Matthew Arnold
90. “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” — William Shakespeare
91. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” — Mark Twain
92. “To find ourselves, we have to first lose ourselves.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
93. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” — Lucille Ball
94. “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again​.” — Joseph Campbell
95. “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”  — Joseph Campbell
96. “This above all; to thine own self be true.” — William Shakespeare
97. “There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
98. “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, we are happy when we are growing.” — William Butler Yeats
99. ​”First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.” — Amos Bronson Alcott
100. “Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.” ― James Thurber

Self Awareness Quotes to Help Find Yourself

101. “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ― Marianne Williamson
102. “I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.” — Billie Jean King
103. “By becoming self-aware, you gain ownership of reality; in becoming real, you become the master of both inner and outer life.” — Deepak Chopra
104.  “Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.” — Debbie Ford
105. “Self-awareness is the only way we can access the emotional brain on a conscious level.” — Marilee Sprenger
106. “As your self-awareness grows, you become capable of greater honestly.” — Tom Goodell
107. “A high level of self-awareness leads to good self-control and self-monitoring.” — Neal Martin
108. “Self-awareness is the foundation of authenticity, and thus it is at the center of your compass.” — Bill George
109. “Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.” – Mooji
110. “Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions.” –Stephen Covey

Final Thoughts: Quotes About Finding Yourself 

The exploration of your inner self is a profound journey, often described as the greatest discovery you will ever make.  Starting the process of self-discovery leads you beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone, unlocking the treasures hidden within. 

I hope these inspirational quotes about finding yourself will help you achieve your greatest accomplishment — that of finding your authentic self.  And in turn finding true happiness and peace. Best wishes!  

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Love to ALL! ~ Susan

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