Quotes About Self-awareness

I've never understood what people mean when they say they have to find themselves. We know who we are. The hard part is being that person. It's always so much easier to be someone else.

I've never understood what people mean when they say they have to find themselves. We know who we are. The hard part is being that person. It's always so much easier to be someone else.

evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Ne obmanjuj makar samoga sebe.

I only know this, that if I am the cause of unhappiness in others I myself am no less unhappy.

I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.

no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…

We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

A man may ask anything of a woman, but unless he wishes to behave like a brute, he must make it possible for her to act in harmony with her deepest self-deceptions.

I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people.

vivre dans la vérité, ne mentir ni à soi-même ni aux autres, ce n'est possible qu'à la condition de vivre sans public. Dès lors qu'il y a un témoin à nos actes, nous nous adaptons bon gré mal gré aux yeux qui nous observent, et plus rien de ce que nous faisons n'est vrai. Avoir un public, penser à un public, c'est vivre dans le mensonge (partie III, ch. 7)

He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible.

she thought that after what she had been through during the invasion she would stop being petty and grow up, grow wise and strong, but she had overestimated herself

But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes.

The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful.

Porque es así y vale para todos: nunca sabremos por qué irritamos a la gente, qué es lo que nos hace simpáticos, qué es lo que noshace ridículos; nuestra propia imagen es para nosotros nuestro mayor misterio

Esa preocupación por la propia imagen, ahí es donde reside la fatal inmadurez del hombre

Pero después llega un momento en el que estás frente al espejo y te preguntas: ¿esto soy yo? ¿y por qué? ¿por qué me he solidarizado con esto? ¿y a mi qué me importa este rostro? Y en ese momento todo empieza a hundirse. Todo empieza a hundirse.

La honte n'a pas pour fondement une faute que nous aurions commise, mais l'humiliation que nous éprouvons à être ce que nous sommes sans l'avoir choisi, et la sensation insupportable que cette humiliation est visible de partout.

Porque o homem pensa e a verdade escapa-lhe. Porque quanto mais os homens pensam, mais o pensamento de um se afasta do outro. E, finalmente, porque o homem nunca é aquilo que pensa ser.

When he was still living in Bohemia and would run into people who had known him earlier, he was always surprised to find that they considered him a fairly courageous person (he thought himself cowardly), with a caustic wit (he considered himself a bore) and a kind heart (he remembered only his stinginess).