Quotes About Self-discovery

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.

People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own, quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in a world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, -- that we find we have (a common Nature) -- one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.

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

Ser você mesmo em um mundo que está constantemente tentando fazer de você outra coisa é a maior realização.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature

The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

so much of nature as he is ignorant of,so much of his own mind does not yet posess

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

Lo que queda detrás de nosotros, y lo que queda delante, es poca cosa comparada con lo que queda dentro de nosotros.

If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

you how to get it yourself, that's of great benefit.) Our lives are transformed when we come to ourselves—when we awaken to God in ourselves. This is the path that Jesus walked, and bid us to follow. This is the way of salvation.

If a person is constantly reading and absorbing the thoughts of others, their growth will be stunted. In order to fully develop, we need periods of solitude, self-inquiry, and recovery.

Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the secret of our own nature. They are test objects.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.