Quotes About Self-awareness

Bfore Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell:

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well...

It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.

To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

I have not seen anywhere in the world a more obvious malformed person and miracle than myself. Through use and time we become conditioned to anything strange; but the more I become familiar with and know myself, the more my deformity amazes me and the less I understand myself.

La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir être à soi.

If you walk on stilts, you're still walking on your feet. If you sit on the highest throne in the world, you're still sitting on your ass.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.

If I had even the slightest grasp upon my own faculties, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.

I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own.

Whatever it be, whether art or nature, that has inscribed in us this condition of living by reference to others, it does us much more harm than good. We defraud ourselves out of what is actually useful to us in order to make appearances conform to common opinion. We care less about the real truth of our inner selves than about how we are known to the public.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.

I consider myself an average person, except for the fact that I consider myself an average person.