QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973, American author)
One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.
Claude M. Bristol (1891-1951, American author of "The Magic Of Believing")
Self knowers always dwell in El Dorado; they drink from the fountain of youth, and at all times owners of all they wish to enjoy.
Claude M. Bristol (1891-1951, American author of "The Magic Of Believing")
The conqueror and king in each one of us is the knower of truth. Let the knower awaken in us and drive the horses of the mind, emotions, and physical body on the pathway, which that king has chosen.
George S. Arundale (1878-1945, English Theosophist, author and editor)
Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help.... We find that bit by bit we can discard the old life -- the one that did not work -- for a new life that can and does work under conditions whatever.
As Bill Sees It
No one can figure out your worth but you.
Pearl Bailey (1918-1990, American vocalist, movie and stage actress)
There is a period of life when we swallow knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Pearl Bailey (1918-1990, American vocalist, movie and stage actress)
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
Philip James Bailey (1816-1902, British poet)
Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.
Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965, American financier)
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand -- like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery -- in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.
Walter Benjamin (1982-1940, German critic, philosopher)
It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.
Josh Billings (1815-1885, American humorist, lecturer)
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
Boethius
The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.
Francis H. Bradley (1846-1924, British philosopher)
To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning in your life.
Paula P. Brownlee
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973, American novelist)
Prayer, like radium, is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.
Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944, French biologist)
Make it your business to know yourself -- which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, poet)
We are the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then.
Agatha Christie (1891-1976, British mystery writer)
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Albert Camus (1913-1960, French existential writer)
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Albert Camus (1913-1960, French existential writer)
The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
Elias Canetti (1905-1994, Austrian novelist, philosopher)
To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it -- this is a hard lesson.
Bruce Catton (American author)
Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917, Scottish preacher, author)
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
Chuang Tzu (c 369 BC-286 BC, Chinese philosopher)
The precept, "Know yourself," was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind; but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
Marcus T. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC, Roman orator, politician)
What families have in common the world around is that they are the place where people learn who they are and how to be that way.
Jean Illsley Clarke
He that knows himself, knows others; and He that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)
Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.
Isak Dinesen (1885-1962, American author)
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, "Know thyself," and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
You have to know what's important and what's unimportant, for you.
David Harold Fink
I know myself, but that is all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940, American writer) Author's website: www.fitzgeraldsociety.org
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)
People who concentrate on giving good service always get more personal satisfaction as well as better business. How can we get better service? One way is by trying to see ourselves as others do.
Patricia Fripp (British-born American author, speaker)
I believe that dreams transport us through the underside of our days, and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are, the signposts are there, waiting for us to translate them.
Gail Godwin
I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.
George Gurdjieff (1873-1949, Russian adept, teacher, writer)
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
George Gurdjieff (1873-1949, Russian adept, teacher, writer)
If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.
Carl Jung (1875-1961, Swiss psychiatrist)
We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.
Carl Jung (1875-1961, Swiss psychiatrist)
An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.'
Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471, German monk, mystic, religious writer)
I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards becoming a champion.
Billie Jean King (1943-, American tennis player)
Long ago I understood that it wasn't merely my being a woman that was preventing my being welcomed into the world of what I long thought of as my peers. It was that I had succeeded in an undertaking few men have even attempted: I have become myself.
Alice Koller
Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
Louis Kronenberger
He knows the universe and does not know himself.
Jean De La Fontaine (1621-1695, French poet)
He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.
Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism)
Know thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.
Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism)
To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.
Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801, Swiss theologian, mystic)
It's not our disadvantages or short-comings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist.
Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837, Italian poet, scholar)
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799, German physicist, satirist)
Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
Joshua Loth Liebman
Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others.... And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001, American author)
We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world -- introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably -- that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974, American journalist)
Turn your doubts to question; turn your question to prayers; turn your prayers to God.
Mark R. Litteton
If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.
Sidney Madwed
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Thomas Mann (1875-1955, German author, critic)
You can live a lifetime and at the end, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
Beryl Markham
Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, et cetera with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.
Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970, American psychologist)
One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)
Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.
Cynthia Ozick (1928-, American novelist, short-story writer)
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744, British poet, critic, translator)
'Tis not need we know our every thought or see the work shop where each mask is wrought wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit and serve our jape's turn for a night or two.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972, American poet, critic)
Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.
Spanish Proverb (Sayings of Spanish origin)
Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self.
Blum Ralph (American author)
A mature person is one who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that ...all of us need both love and charity.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962, American First Lady, columnist, lecturer, humanitarian)
Our lives teach us who we are.
Salman Rushdie (1948-, Indian-born British author)
A true knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power.
Mark Rutherford
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery (1900-1944, French aviator, writer)
Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman)
What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman)
The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
Robert W. Service (1874-1958, British poet)
The delights of self-discovery are always available.
Gail Sheehy (1937-, American journalist, author)
To know yourself, see how others do, to know others look into your own heart.
Sydney Smiles
Know thyself.
Socrates (BC 469-399, Greek philosopher of Athens)
The granting of prayer, when offered in the name of Jesus, reveals the Father's love to him, and the honor which he has put upon him.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892, British Baptist preacher)
There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902, American social reformer and women's suffrage leader)
We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.
St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582, Spanish saint, mystic)
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
Thales of Miletus (640-546 BC, Founder of Greek philosophy, sciences)
Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
You never know yourself till you know more than your body.
Thomas Traherne (1636-1674, British clergyman, poet, mystic)
Analysis and synthesis ordinarily clarify matters for us about as much as taking a Swiss watch apart and dumping its wheels, springs, hands, threads, pivots, screws and gears into a layman's hands for reassembling, clarifies a watch to a layman.
Author Unknown
Before a man can wake up and find himself famous he has to wake up and find himself.
Author Unknown
Know yourself, master yourself, conquest of self is most gratifying.
Author Unknown
Know one, know all.
Katha Upanishad (Ancient Hindu scripture)
It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are -- not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within -- that you can begin to take control.
Oprah Winfrey (1954-, American TV personality, producer, actress, author)
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book shown to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, British novelist, essayist)
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, British novelist, essayist)
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