30+ Of The Best UNTAMED Quotes: Find Your Guidance with Glennon Doyle
Like so many readers with Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, I’ve found a lot of inspiration and encouragement with a more recent, similar book: Untamed by Glennon Doyle. This part self-development book and part manifesto for leaning into your best life encourages everyone—particularly self-identified women—to let go of the imaginary restraints holding you back from living the life you dream of while being mindful of how those actions may impact others in your life. It’s no surprise that the book is packed full of memorable lines and hard-won insight from Doyle, who left her husband when she found herself falling in love with another woman, shaking her life to its core. Not only did she upend what felt like was supposed to be the right life for her, she experienced challenges with her mental health and had to work to understand the whys, hows, and tools for moving forward. There are so many Untamed quotes that have stuck in my head, and I suspect even for folks who haven’t picked up the bestselling book, many of these Glennon Doyle quotes will resonate deeply.
Grab a pen or your Pinterest and prepare to keep these Untamed quotes close at hand for the hard days, for the days where you feel like you lack inspiration, and for the days when it feels as though pursuing the best life is impossible. Add ’em to your bullet journal, develop them into mantras, and tape them to your mirror for that burst of wisdom.
30+ Of The Best UNTAMED Quotes
1. When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.
2. Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back.
3. Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.
4. I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.
5. There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.
6. Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.
7. The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me.
8. Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself.
9. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.
10. I will not stay, not ever again—in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.
11. The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. The opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor.
12. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right.
13. Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you’re there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren’t waiting patiently enough.
14. We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.
15. Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.
16. You are here to decide if your life, relationships and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right—perhaps even the duty—to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.
17. The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it’s supposed to be.
18. We can do hard things.
19. It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. You’re not doing life wrong; you’re doing it right. If there’s any secret you’re missing, it’s that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you’re doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.
20. The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question.
21. Here’s to The Untamed:
May we know them.
May we raise them.
May we love them.
May we read them.
May we elect them.
May we be them.
22. What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.
23. Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else’s way instead of forging your own. Freedom is not being for or against an ideal, but creating your own existence from scratch.
24. Our boys are born with great potential for nurturing, caring, loving, and serving. Let’s stop training it out of them.
25. Whether you are brave or not cannot be judged by people on the outside. Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you’re a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself.
26. Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled.
27. You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you.
28. What I thought would kill me, didn’t. Every time I said to myself: I can’t take this anymore—I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all—and I kept surviving. Surviving again and again made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life.
29. Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We do not accept compliments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, “I feel like” instead of “I know.” We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for…everything. Conversations among brilliant women often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected, but we want to be loved and accepted even more.
30. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.
Want more empowering, encouraging, life-affirming quotes? You’ll love these literary strong women quotes, the best Brené Brown quotes, and new beginnings quotes.
