Self Knowledge Quotes

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-" "And, adding it all up...?" "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.

Look into your own heart because who looks outside, dreams, but who looks inside awakes.

I think it is impossible for one human being really to know another without first knowing and being at peace with himself.

Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Somewhere, right at the bottom of one’s own being, one generally does know where one should go and what one should do. But there are times when the clown we call “I” behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice cannot make its presence felt.

Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing.

Know your own happiness.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Men have no confidence in an officer who doesn't know his own mind.

...Blessed is anyone who knows who he or she really is and builds a place to live there.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.

The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. But he can make no progress until he becomes very much better acquainted with his own nature.

After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.

The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your best wisdom. And who then knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?

I observe myself and I come to know others.

but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

To be curious about that which is not one's concern while still in ignorance of oneself is ridiculous.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.

In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude - the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.

Know mankind well, don't degrade every man as evil, and don't exalt every man thinking he is good. He who cannot discover himself; cannot discover the world.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

The sage knows himself, but does not parade. He cherishes himself, but does not praise himself.

Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

The greatest discoveries are those that shed light unto ourselves.

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This isthe consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.

I heard people say, 'Why would he want to do this?' My answer is 'Why not?' It is what I love. It's what I know.

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

The most important thing to me is, how, in the process of learning how to use my body, can I come to understand myself ?

We can never be certain of our courage until we have faced danger.

If one doesn't know one's own country, one doesn't have standards for foreign countries.

The martial arts are ultimately self-knowledge. A punch or a kick is not to knock the hell out of the guy in front, but to knock the hell out of your ego, your fear, or your hang-ups.

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and intimate things.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.