Who We Are Quotes - Page 4

• Shadow-making happens in families and makes us who we are. It leads to shadow-work, which makes us who we can become.

  Connie Zweig

  Work, Shadow, Happens

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• It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Kids, Suffering

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• When you study our greatest artists, you will find that they give us a key to understand how to deal with each other, and that our bloodlines are intertwined. It's not hyphenated America. That there is an America, and it is expressed in those arts. It gives us a key to figure out how to negotiate with each other, and it tells us actually who we are.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, America, Keys

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.

  David McCullough

  Past, Generations, Today

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• We humans are a hungry lot. We are driven by a craving to know who we are. Yet who we are is embedded in the heart of a holy God. Unless we seek for ourselves in the epicenter of God's grace, we will be forever condemned to walk the arid edges of self-understanding.

  Calvin Miller

  Heart, Self, Forever

  Calvin Miller (2010). “A Hunger for the Holy: Nuturing Intimacy with Christ”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe that we have no real access to who we really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.

  Carl Jung

  Real, Believe, Safety

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• People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us. ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Thinking, Decisions We Make, People

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• I've learned that every single trial offers us a chance to either turn away from what we know to be true, or to stand strong in who we are...

  Oprah Winfrey

  Strong, Moving, Trials

  "Snuggling up with Martha, Oprah and Dick" by Laurel Wellman, www.sfgate.com. November 1, 2001.

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• What we eat is the one simplest way to declare who we are - the table reflects our values with a clarity that few other theaters of human behaviour posses.

  Adam Gopnik

  Behaviour, Tables, Way

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people.

  David Finckel

  Ideas, Years, People

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• Those of us who don't want to worship an invisible being or spend our days fretting about punishment in Hades do want to be able to share what we hold dear with our families and the broader world, and we want to be understood and appreciated for who we are.

  Greg Epstein

  Punishment, World, Want

  Greg Epstein (2009). “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggressionat our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think weought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other peoplethink we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directlywith compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat andheartache, no punishment.

  Pema Chodron

  Loneliness, Thinking, Compassion

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.76, Shambhala Publications

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• Whatever it is that calls us, that's our path. And as we walk that path, we have a chance to shine forth who we are. It affects other people around us.

  Richard Bach

  People, Shining, Path

  Interview with Michael Peter Langevin, www.inner-growth.info.

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• Everything in life opens and closes, sheds and renews. We are no different. Listening in its endless forms is the way we stay open, the way we stay in relationship, the way we refresh who we are and what we're doing here.

  Mark Nepo

  Listening, Different, Way

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• The truth of who we are has nothing to do with religion or the type of car that we drive or the color of our skin. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And the human experience part is very temporary. So, things like the bar, love, magic, dancing, and colors are there to remind us to not take all of this stuff so seriously.

  RuPaul

  Spiritual, Color, Dancing

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• Whatever happens on the surface, it's leading us in a direction. That beautiful core within us that is our character will make choices that will inevitably leads us to a higher understanding of who we are and why we're here. And it's best to be aware of that while it's happening.

  Richard Bach

  Beautiful, Character, Choices

  Interview with Michael Peter Langevin, www.inner-growth.info.

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• I think the whole idea of home is central to who we are as human beings.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Home, Thinking, Ideas

  Terry Tempest Williams (2006). “A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams”, Utah State Univ Pr

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• It's a false illusion that we wake up thinking of who we are in terms of identity and that we are stuck in the boundaries of who we are nationalistically.

  Elia Suleiman

  Thinking, Identity, Wake Up

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think the source of our sorrow and the source of our joy are intimately entwined. Our sorrow is that we have forgotten who we are, we have forgotten we are one with that source of all life - absolutely indestructible, perfect, joyful. The source of our joy is when we remember that.

  Richard Bach

  Thinking, Perfect, Joy

  An Interview with Richard Bach by Michael Peter Langevin, www.inner-growth.info.

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• What we wear is the shell of who we are.

  Audrey Tautou

  Shells

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• But that Franklin trip changed me profoundly. As I believe wilderness experience changes everyone. Because it puts us in our place. The human place, which our species inhabited for most of its evolutionary life. That place that shaped our psyches and made us who we are. The place where nature is big and we are small.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Believe, Psych, Environment

  Geraldine Brooks (2011). “Boyer Lectures 2011: The Idea of Home”, p.12, HarperCollins Australia

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• Feasting is also closely related to memory. We eat certain things in a particular way in order to remember who we are. Why else would you eat grits in Madison, New Jersey?

  Jeff Smith

  Memories, Food, Order

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• Music, art, writing - it gives us a sense of who we are, a sense of our history, a sense of our future and it should provide some kind of comfort. It's not just entertainment for entertainment's sake, it's an investment.

  Sheryl Crow

  Art, Writing, Giving

  "The Billboard Q&A: Sheryl Crow". Interview with Ken Tucker, www.billboard.com. January 23, 2008.

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• Life is a continual process of arrival into who we are.

  Maria Popova

  Life Is, Process, Arrivals

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• But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, "You are the beloved and on you my favour rests."... I want you to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are.

  Henri Nouwen

  Christian, Spiritual, Voice

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