It Only Happens Once

Blog — Quotes

15 quotes on identity

The golden rule—treat others as you would treat yourself.
The internal golden rule—treat yourself as others should have treated you.

Added in 2026

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

— Albert Einstein

Added in 2026

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

— Carl Jung

Added in 2026

Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?

Meditations, Book 2:820 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

When the ending is unknown, and the distance is unknown, that’s when you know who the fuck you are.

— David Goggins

Added in 2026

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Added in 2026

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny—it is the light that guides your way.

— Heraclitus

Added in 2026

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.
Self-indulgence means tying it to things that happen to you.
Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

Meditations, Book 6:5120 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

The human soul degrades itself above all, when it does its best to become an abscess, a kind of detached growth on the world. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of secession from Nature, which comprises the nature of all things.

Meditations, Book 2:1620 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.
Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.

Meditations, Book 4:7-820 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Added in 2026

Well being is good luck, or good character.

Meditations, Book 7:1720 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

They say every snowflake is different—but the blizzard, it covers us all the same.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, p. 1745 more from Ocean Vuong

Added in 2026

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Added in 2026

The truest ruins are not written down.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, p. 1755 more from Ocean Vuong

Added in 2026

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