“When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.”

Source: Eleven Minutes

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself." by Paulo Coelho?
Paulo Coelho photo
Paulo Coelho 844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947

Related quotes

Dante Alighieri photo

“When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.”

Canto I, lines 1–3 (tr. Mandelbaum).
Longfellow's translation:
: Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Harriet Tubman photo
Henry Ford photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence. Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (2005), p. 385
1950s

John Waters photo

“I stopped taking drugs when I realized that pot smelled bad and LSD trips were becoming like TV reruns. I had had enough inner journeys — I felt I knew myself well enough, thank you.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

“I know I had everything, but not because I had it. I know because afterwards I had nothing else.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Que tuve todo lo sé, no por lo que tuve. Lo sé porque después no tuve más.
Voces (1943)

Christian Serratos photo
Max Stirner photo

“I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and … only in the moment when I posit myself; that is, I am creator and creature in one.”

Ich setze Mich nicht voraus, weil Ich Mich jeden Augenblick überhaupt erst setze oder schaffe, und nur dadurch Ich bin, dass Ich nicht vorausgesetzt, sondern gesetzt bin, und wiederum nur in dem Moment gesetzt, wo ich mich setze, d.h. Ich bin Schöpfer un Geschöpf in Einem.
Cambridge 1995, p. 135
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Related topics