Elihu Burritt Quotes

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

I think almost everything in life is life-experience, personality-driven.

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

Carving out an identity for yourself is important so I'm trying to do that as well.

Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

I see people as being what their personality is at the moment of expression.

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable... I hope I have that going forward.

I can't imagine, as a human being, not being able to grow.

As I learn more about myself, I think people learn more about me as well. It seems to correlate that way. I learn how to represent myself more as it goes on.

Who isn't difficult? I'm difficult as an artist.

Everything about who I am, negative and positive, is what shaped me.

Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself.

The shape of your character is the shape of your future.

It's really about connecting to your own humanity and your own behaviors, and getting to a level of self-awareness so that you can have perspective and step outside of yourself and transform and become another person.

Maturity involves being honest and true to oneself, making decisions based on a conscious internal process, assuming responsibility for one's decisions, having healthy relationships with others and developing one's own true gifts. It involves thinking about one's environment and deciding what one will and won't accept.

Our minds are all different and I believe cultivating a keen introspective sensitivity is absolutely essential in discovering our potential.

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing

In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.

Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost.