Source identified
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
Voice: Fictional character · Ophelia
The line leaves room between present identity and future possibility, making it useful for reflection on change and potential.
Source note: Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5; Ophelia speaks during her disrupted state, so the line remains dramatic dialogue rather than Shakespearean autobiography.
Source identified
“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
Stanton challenges a moral standard that praises women mainly for self-denial, arguing instead that developing one’s capacities is itself an important obligation.
Source note: The Woman’s Bible, Stanton commentary; the line appears in her critique of idealizing women’s self-sacrifice and is preserved in the Project Gutenberg text.
Source identified
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”
Voice: Fictional character · Caroline Bingley
The line is memorable as praise of reading, though its comic context matters because Miss Bingley says it while performing interest for Darcy.
Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 11; context is ironic.
Source identified
“The purpose of life is unquestionably unfoldment, growth, advancement”
Trine states his view of purpose directly: life should continue to develop rather than settle into mental or moral stagnation.
Source note: The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit; Project Gutenberg #28163. The surrounding text describes evolution from “lower” to “higher” in spiritual terms; this is Trine’s philosophical-religious position, not a scientific law of human development.
Source identified
“Every individual is a marvel of unknown and unrealized possibilities.”
Jordan locates worth partly in capacities that have not yet been discovered or developed, resisting a final judgment based only on present performance.
Source note: Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, later discussion of individual possibility. The sentence is motivational rhetoric about human potential rather than a measurable universal prediction.
Source identified
“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”
Whitman describes self-discovery as expansion rather than invention: experience reveals capacities and goodness that were already present but insufficiently recognized.
Source note: Song of the Open Road, section 5, after the speaker describes loosening imagined limits.