Quotes About Self-awareness

Self-deprecation is the appropriate response of any new convert, as he matches his stained soul against the purity of God.

All that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.

I would not care whether people thought I was special, if my life was truly special. It would not mater to me that people could see me as pious, if I could truly live as a woman scholar of piety. I want to be what I seem to be. I act as if I am specially holy, a special girl; but this is what I really want to be. I really do.

I knew that I was smiling her smile, that she was a dark mirror to me.

can't change what you don't acknowledge.

In the meantime, let's agree that what makes a problem big is simply that it's yours.

It takes a certain amount of courage, he though, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.

At this very moment, you may be saying to yourself that you have any number of admirable qualities. You are a loyal friend, a caring person, someone who is smart, dependable, fun to be around. That's wonderful, and I'm happy for you, but let me ask you this: are you being any of those things to yourself?

In fact, those who most seem to be themselves appear to me people impersonating what they think they might like to be, believing they ought to be, or wish to be taken to be by whoever is setting standards. So in earnest are they that being in earnest is the act. For certain self-aware people, however, this is not possible: to imagine themselves being themselves, living their own real, authentic, or genuine life, has for them all the aspects of a hallucination.

You have a responsibility to see that your wounded selves do not get in the way of your warrior selves.

For your information, Lester, there are at least five wonderful parts of the female body that can be viewed by the owner only with a hand mirror.' And as they stared after me, I went regally back down the hallway and up the stairs to Dad's room.

Recovery from codependence is a lot like a growing up process - we must learn to do the things our dysfunctional parents did not teach us to do: appropriately esteem ourselves, set functional boundaries, be aware of and acknowledge our reality, take care of our adult needs and wants, and experience our reality moderately.

Codependents don`t just wake up one day saying I think I'll move over into maturity and mental health

Not knowing how to be moderate is possibly the most visible symptom of codependence to other people. (...) In other words codependents simply don't appear to understand what moderation is. They are either totally involved or totally detached, totally happy or absolutely miserable, etc. The codependent believes a moderate response to a situation isn't enough. Only too much is enough.

So it is that Lonely Places attract as many lonely people as they produce, and the loneliness we see in them is partly in ourselves.

Was it only through another that I could begin to get at myself?

A man is only the man he seems to be. Inside, where no one sees, he may be a mass of gnawing worms of doubt and ire and grief. ... No challenge is easy. The measure of the challenge a man rises to at need is the measure of the man.

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

for the unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].

I am smart because I know I nothing.

I am better off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.

I would rather . . . that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself.

The untrained mind keeps up a running commentary, labelling everything, judging everything. Best to ignore that commentary. Don't argue or resist, just ignore. Deprived of attention and interest, this voice gets quieter and quieter and eventually just shuts up.