Quotes About Self-awareness

For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disseverment, and are trying to communicate, but when communication is established they fall silent.

Sometimes she had it; sometimes not. She never knew why it came or why it went, or if she had it until she came into the room and then she knew instantly by the way some man looked at her

Thank God, Helen, I'm not like you! I sometimes think you don't think or feel or care to do anything but exist! You're like Mr. Hirst. You see that things are bad, and you pride yourself on saying so. It's what you call being honest; as a matter of fact it's being lazy, being dull, being nothing. You don't help; you put an end to things.

Half one's notions of other people were, after all, grotesque. They served private purposes of one's own.

unless I am myself, I am nobody.

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted.

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who am blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointed at; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose? But for what purpose?

Habits gradually change the face of ones life as time changes one's physical face;& one does not know it.

Whatever may be their use in civilised societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action.

Tinha a esquisita sensação de estar invisível; despercebida; desconhecida; de não ser mais casada, não ter mais filhos agora, apenas aquela espantosa e um tanto solene marcha com os demais, por Bond Street, ser esta Sra. Dalloway; nem mais Clarissa: Sra. Dalloway somente.

But Lord! once one began mouthing words aloud, how silly they sounded!

In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is herself? I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know, I do not believe that you know.

When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else.

Magában lehet, egyedül. S mostanában erre gyakran van szüksége - hogy gondolkozzék. Hogy ne kelljen beszélnie, egyedül legyen. Az egész lét, minden, amit teszünk, dallamos, ragyogó, lelkesítÅ', elillan, s ünnepélyes érzéssel önmagunkká, legigazibb lényünkké zsugorodunk, a sötétség ék alakú, mások számára láthatatlan magvává.

C'est pourquoi je hais les miroirs qui me montrent mon vrai visage. Seule, je tombe souvent dans le néant. Je dois poser le pied prudemment sur le rebord du monde, de peur de tomber dans le néant. Je suis forcée de me cogner la tête contre une porte bien dure, pour me contraindre à rentrer dans mon propre corps.»

But how describe the world seen without a self?

If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.

And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and blues.

se dirigió al extremo opuesto del salón, haica un rincón en penumbra donde colgaba un espejo, y se miró. ¡No! No iba bien. Y de inmediato la congoja que siempre intentaba ocultar, la profunda insatisfacción - la sensación que tenía, desde que era niña, de ser inferior a los demás -, se apoderó de ella, implacable, despiadada, con tal intensidad que no podía rechazarla

We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Agnes Smedley also knows what the century knows: that we become what is done to us.

When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor.

All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.