Quotes About Self-examination

Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.

I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings.

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing, Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.

At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were.

Entry into the kingdom of God is not a casual affair. It involves a radical confrontation with God, and it seems impossible that it could happen without a profound self-examination and a penetrating self-knowledge.

He wanted to feel as if he were—to play on his famous line from On the Waterfront—a "contender," someone who mattered, someone who had fought the good fight. He wanted to feel as if he had made a difference, left a mark, and not just on acting. What he did not want to be was an "unthinker," the way he described those people who never examined themselves or their place in the world.

The attempt at introspective analysis... is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness.

SURRENDER—Pray Psalm 139:23–24: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Commit to respond to whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to you.

I don't like to read about myself, whether it be positive or negative.

If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?

Das Ungenügen mit sich selbst ist der eigentliche Stachel.

I often wonder if the bill is yet to be presented during our lifetime. If not, I must present it to myself.

I've found that doing interviews forces you to face yourself; I'm constantly having to search within myself, to see why I do certain things.

Who are you, Christina Olson? he asked me once. Nobody had ever asked me that. I had to think about it for a while.

A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings.

All others are outside myself; I lock my door and bar them out The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all? If I could once lay down myself, And start self-purged upon the race That all must run ! Death runs apace.

THE CONFESSION OF AN INTERIOR MAN, LEADING TO HUMILITY Turning my gaze at myself and attentively observing the course of my interior life I am convinced, through experience, that I love neither God nor my neighbor, that I have no faith, and that I am full of pride and sensuality. This realization is the result of careful examination of my feelings and actions. I do not love God. For if I loved Him, then I would be constantly thinking of

What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.

What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.