To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.


- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.


- Judy Garland

Why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out?


- Oliver James

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

- Billie Holiday

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

- Howard Thurman

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.

- Henry David Thoreau

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

- William Arthur Ward

Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.


- Sean Covey

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth." 

- Dan Rather

Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.

- Samuel Smiles

Love yourself first and everything falls into line.

- Lucille Ball

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.


- Walt Whitman

Everybody is unique. Compare not yourself with anybody else lest you spoil God’s curriculum.

- Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

- E. E. Cummings

Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.

- Parker Palmer

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.


- William Shakespeare

It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.


- Thomas Moore

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.


- Buddha

Learn the skills needed to nurture you. Ask yourself: 'How do I nurture others?' and apply that to yourself.


- Luke De Sadeleer

Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief she is beautiful.

- Sophia Loren