Quotes About Self-awareness

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.

But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.

I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.

Easy to break mirror; less easy to see oneself. (Facile de casser le miroir; - Moins facile de s'y voir.)

We want the qualities of fools that our faults devour, then us. (Nous voulons qualités des fous - Que nos défauts dévorent, puis nous.) [Fables1, The Cheetah / Le Guépard]

I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.

There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own, yer know.

So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

Yes. He is quite a good fellow - nobody's enemy but his own.

Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that.

What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.

Every man's his own friend, my dear," replied Fagin, with his most insinuating grin. "He hasn't as good a one as himself anywhere." Except sometimes," replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of the world. "Some people are nobody's enemies but their own, yer know." Don't believe that!" said the Jew. "When a man's his own enemy, it's only because he's too much his own friend; not because he's careful for everybody but himself. Pooh! Pooh! There ain't such a thing in nature.

Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!

We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?

Don't believe that,' said Fagin. 'When a man's his own enemy, it's only because he's too much his own friend.

What do I know, father,' said Louisa in her quiet manner, 'of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?' As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.