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Ralph Ellison Quotes

Total quotes: 5
“Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.”
— Ralph Ellison, Fearful Symmetry- The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values
Tagged: Relationships, human, Values
“To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Tagged: Passion, Pride, Shame
“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Tagged: self, Seeking Validation, Self-Acceptance, self awareness, Self Confidence, self control, Self & Identity, Self-Worth, Inspirational
“She was too pure for life,’ he said sadly. ‘Too pure and too good and too beautiful.’”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Tagged: Too Much, Good
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Tagged: Invisibility, Perception, Objectification
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