“I am becoming terribly myself, perhaps in reaction against everything that increasingly forces me to be someone else.”

Original: Je deviens terriblement moi-même. Peut-être par réaction contre tout ce qui me contraint de plus en plus à être un autre. — Individuality can emerge as a resistance to social pressure and imposed identities. · Cahiers (French)

• Freedom
• Identity
• Individuality

“It is what I carry that is unknown to myself that makes me myself.”

Original: C'est ce que je porte d'inconnu à moi-même qui me fait moi. — Identity is presented as containing an irreducible element that remains mysterious even to oneself. · Monsieur Teste (French)

• Identity
• Mystery
• Self Knowledge

“We are always the same age inside.”

A reflection on the continuity of inner identity across time · Conversation, commonly attributed

• Age
• Identity
• Self

“I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age, than my own sensations.”

Describing imagination as a way of moving beyond the limits of one's immediate self. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

• Creativity
• Identity
• Imagination

“A people always ends by resembling its shadow.”

A striking observation on how a society can become shaped by the image it projects. · Conversation with André Maurois, c. 1930

• Identity
• Politics
• Society

“The Dorset dialect is a broad and bold shape of the English language, as the Doric was of the Greek.”

Defending Dorset speech as a rich and legitimate form of English rather than a corrupted one · A Dissertation on the Dorset Dialect of the English Language

• Culture
• Identity
• Language

“I myself, Andalusian, Sevillian to the marrow—from there I come, and my parents and grandparents before me—sing my own feelings in the style of my land, with no aim but to ease them or exalt them, as they pain or please me.”

Original: Yo mismo, andaluz, sevillano hasta la médula (de allí soy, de allí mis padres y mis abuelos), canto al estilo de mi tierra los sentimientos propios, sin otra idea que la de aliviarlos o exaltarlos, según me duelen o me complacen. — Explains his adoption of the Andalusian copla as a vehicle for direct personal feeling rather than folkloric imitation · Preface to Cante hondo, 1912 (Spanish)

• Craft
• Identity
• Poetry

“A sectional literature does not seem to us to promise much.”

Scepticism about literature defined primarily by regional allegiance · Letter concerning Southern literature

• Culture
• Identity
• Literature

“Tell me whom you associate with, and I will tell you who you are.”

Original: Sage mir, mit wem du umgehst, so sage ich dir, wer du bist. — The company we choose is presented as a revealing reflection of our character. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Character
• Friendship
• Identity

“The Irishman, finding himself in another environment, outside Ireland, very often knows how to make his worth felt.”

Joyce links exile with the opportunity for individual development. · Lecture, Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages, 1907

• Exile
• Identity
• Opportunity

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”

Framing liberation as the achievement of an undivided and fully recognised self. · The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

• Freedom
• Identity
• Struggle

“One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.”

Expressing the divided identity produced by racial exclusion. · The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

• Belonging
• Consciousness
• Identity

“A friend is a second self.”

Presenting friendship as a form of profound recognition and shared identity · Prose, A Cypress Grove

• Connection
• Friendship
• Identity

“The world's a stage, on which all men are players: they have their exits and their entrances; and each man in his time plays many parts.”

A memorable meditation on the roles people assume throughout life, often associated with but predating Shakespeare's similar formulation · Essay, An Apology for Actors

• Identity
• Life
• Theatre

“Je ne veux pas être heureuse, je veux être entière.”

Expressing a desire for wholeness and authenticity rather than uncomplicated happiness · Journal, 1913–1934

• Happiness
• Identity
• Integrity

“I am a railman first, but my heart is ever bound to the simple songs of our Scottish soil and workers.”

Reflecting on his life as a surfaceman and his enduring commitment to folk poetry · Prefatory remark / correspondence

• Identity
• Poetry
• Work

“Become who you are, having learned what that is.”

Original: Γένοι’ οἷος ἐσσὶ μαθών. — A timeless imperative toward self-knowledge and authentic self-realisation. · Pythian Odes, II.72 (Greek)

• Identity
• Self
• Wisdom

“I walk through life like someone who has lost his path in the fog.”

Original: Ich gehe durch das Leben wie jemand, der seinen Weg im Nebel verloren hat. — Conveys his pervasive sense of directionlessness and confusion · Letter to Ludwig von Ficker, 1913 (German)

• Anxiety
• Identity
• Life

“We are all strangers to ourselves.”

Original: Wir sind uns alle selbst Fremde. — Reflects on self-alienation and the unknowable nature of identity · Notebook entry, c. 1911 (German)

• Identity
• Psychology
• Self

“A self is, in plain language, a soul.”

A concise expression of her philosophical identification of selfhood with the soul. · A Defence of Idealism

• Identity
• Self
• Soul

“The few lighter persons in the community drew together; we were literally thrown upon each other, whether we liked or not.”

Describing the social isolation of mixed-race individuals · Essay, 'Brass Ankles Speaks'

• Community
• Identity
• Race

“I have written much beside the Spoon Rivers.”

Rejects the idea that his literary identity should be confined to his famous anthology · Letter to August Derleth, 1939

• Identity
• Literature
• Writing

“I am a newspaperman who writes verse.”

A modest description of his vocation that deliberately resists the grander title of poet · Statement quoted in Time, 1959

• Humility
• Identity
• Writing

“I am Providence, and Providence is myself—together, indissolubly as one, we stand thro' the ages; a fixt monument set aeternally in the shadow of Durfee's ice-clad peak.”

His celebrated declaration of identification with his native city · Letter to James F. Morton, 16 May 1926

• Home
• Identity
• Place