Quotes About Self-awareness

There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.

Zen meditation is meant to bring an end to the delusory and destructive ego, not to serve it as a means for achieving its ends.

Nothing is a blinding as neurotic self-pity. We walk around in a fog.

For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they're around mirrors.

A person can carry his own persecutor, his own prison, about with him, Monseigneur. He can - as you know - die of thirst even when he has the clearest water within his reach. To be free...not to be free...it is all relative. No one has to drag along more ballast than he wants to and he who allows himself to be bound is a fool. The biggest fools are those who wear shackles of cobwebs and believe themselves to be helpless.

Zij geloofde aan een samenhang van alle verschijnselen, zonder echter een hogere macht aansprakelijk te stellen voor wat haar overkwam, zonder van een god persoonlijke bemoeienis met haar lot, troost, of loon naar werken te verwachten. Zij was er van overtuigd dat in de mens zelf de krachten ontstaan die men Goed en Kwaad noemt, en dat alleen door de ontwikkeling van het individuele bewustzijn de wil tot integriteit een menselijk gegeven wordt.

Ik kende hem, zoals ik Telaga Hideung kende – een spiegelende oppervlakte. De diepte peilde ik nooit.

I like photographing women who appear to know something of life. I recently did a session with a great beauty, a movie star in in her thirties. I photographed her twice within three weeks and the second time I said: You're much more beautiful today than you were three weeks ago. And she replied: But I'm also three weeks older.

We want ourselves to be seen and to have been seen as we are; and we want just as much to veil ourselves and remain unknown, for behind every determination of our being lies dormant the unspoken possibility of being different.

Desconfío de la gente que dice que nunca tiene miedo. Creo que mienten. No tanto a mí como a sí mismos.

I learnt the most important thing you have to know: how to look after yourself. To stand by your own decisions. I didn't become an author during my time in Paris, but that wasn't important. I took the first step towards becoming a human being with self-awareness. The big step forward after that discovery I had made -- that I am myself and nobody else -- while standing outside the community centre in Sveg.

I'm a man who doesn't laugh enough, he thought. Without my noticing, middle age has marooned me on a coast with too many dangerous submerged rocks.

Men are often childish and vain, although they deny it. - Marianne Falk

He always put off the most important matters affecting his own life. When he was at work, on the other hand, he insisted on arguing for precisely the opposite approach. Always do the most important things first. He had a split personality.

I ask myself everyday what my life is doing to me and I realize I don't have anybody I can talk to. You should have said the Doctor everybody should.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are

The man who articulate the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. He is able to create space for Him who heart is greater than his, whose eyes see more than his, and whose hands can heal more than his.

There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.

The main question is "Do you own your pain?" As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.

In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God.

Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others.

Loneliness is painful; Solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community...