Quotes About Self-awareness

Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later [...]. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it?

Quantas vezes contamos a história da nossa vida? Quantas vezes adaptamos, embelezamos, fazemos cortes matreiros? E, quanto mais a vida avança, menos são os que à nossa volta desafiam o nosso relato, para nos lembrar que a nossa vida não é a nossa vida, é só a história que contámos sobre a nossa vida. Que contámos aos outros mas — principalmente — a nós próprios.

as for knowing your own mind, this seemed a bewildering process. How could you know your own mind without using your mind to discover your mind in the first place?

Hoe vaak vertellen we ons eigen levensverhaal? Hoe vaak stellen we bij, verfraaien we, laten we handig dingen weg? En hoe langer het leven doorgaat, hoe minder er om ons heen overblijven om onze versie te betwisten, ons eraan te herinneren dat ons leven niet ons leven is, maar alleen het verhaal dat wij erover verteld hebben. Verteld aan anderen, maar - voornamelijk - aan onzelf.

And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse—a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred—about my whole life.

Viver sozinho tem momentos de auto-comiseração e paranóia.

Con quale frequenza raccontiamo la storia della nostra vita? Aggiustandola, migliorandola, applicandovi tagli strategici? E più avanti si va negli anni, Meno corriamo il rischio che qualcuno intorno a noi ci possa contestare quella versione dei fatti, ricordandoci che la nostra vita non è la nostra vita, ma solo la storia che ne abbiamo raccontato. Agli altri, ma soprattutto noi stessi. da Il senso di una fine

You realize that you want official interference into other people's lives but not into your own. You also realize that your truthfulness has become dangerously flexible.

Cast out the beam from your own eye before you seek to extract the mote from the eye of another.

I don't want you to be a woman of mystery. I think I'd hate it. Either it's just a façade, a game, a technique for ensnaring men, or else the woman of mystery is a mystery even to herself, and that's the worst of all.

Apropo, cum preferati, autodistrugerea prin lipsa cunoasterii sau prin acumularea cunoasterii de sine?

Try as I could -which wasn't very hard- I rarely ended up fantasising a markedly different life from the one that has been mine. I don't this is complacency; it's more likely a lack of imagination, or ambition, or something. I suppose the truth is that, yes, I'm not odd enough not to have done the things I've ended up doing with my life.

I often wondered about Nigel, and why things seemed so much clearer to him. Was it more, or less, intelligence; more, or less, imagination; or simply a more stable personality?

Many artists live with the shadow version of themselves. Unawareness of how things might have been if they have done this and not that. If life had made this choice for them rather than that. The road not taken remains at the back of the mind. For some their shadow exists as an external presence, for others an inner haunting.

Irony, he had come to realise, was as vulnerable to the accidents of life and time as any other sense. You woke up one morning and no longer knew if your tongue was in your cheek; and even if it was, whether that mattered anymore, whether anyone noticed. You imagined you were issuing a beam of ultraviolet light, but what if it failed to register because it was off the spectrum known to everyone else?

Well, in one sense, I can't know what it is that I don't know. That's philosophically selfevident." He left one of those slight pauses in which we again wondered if he was engaged in subtle mockery or a high seriousness beyond the rest of us.

How do you know me? she says. He looks at her through his narrow eyes. I was, he says. You were what? she asks. I was, he says again. And now I'm not.

It's not the first time in his life he's felt like a man.

suddenly remembered that when I portrayed Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway, I unconsciously toed-in, giving the flower girl a slightly pigeon-toed lack of grace in her clumsy boots, then I straightened my feet when she acquired confidence and poise as a "lady." It made me smile to think I was doing the exact opposite for Mary Poppins.

The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.

Yes, Miss Masters, but walking is also a way to announce who you are. Gideon waved one arm impassionedly. How you view yourself in the world. The way you hold yourself, the way you move, how you occupy a space, tells other people a good deal about you, ~from To Love a Thief

She charmed and sparkled and said witty things, but she knew very well she was being charming and sparkling and witty while she was doing it, which somehow felt wrong.

If you're afraid to let someone else see your weakness, take heart: Nobody's perfect. Besides, your attempts to hide your flaws don't work as well as you think they do.

We all have different skill sets, interests, concentration cycles, and energy levels. The key is to find out how long it really takes YOU to do the things you need to do and move away from wishful thinking.