Ella Maillart Quotes

If there's a common thread to my books, it is that each involves an individual's journey. The individual must stay true to themselves.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

A lot of people go on this journey of finding themselves and then eventually realize that their true self wasn't on the outside but it's always been there.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

The only journey is the one within.

One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.

What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

I don't know that you can put a label on growth. I'm just me.

I think 'Lost Boy' is more of a metaphor for oneself. When I listen to that song, I don't picture someone else. I kind of wrote it from a very honest place.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.

Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.

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

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

The portrait I do best is of the person I know best.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that's not easy.

Like all of my fictions, 'Sinner' is a mirror. Look into it and you will find yourself. What you do with what you see is your choice.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

I've been through so much of my own self-search that I'm not as consumed with who I am as I used to be.

In my book, I was trying to get into my own soul.

Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life.

The real rub is finding that authentic self and it's not something that's going to come to you overnight.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.