Quotes About Self-awareness

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. "Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror. But that's not the worst. We think everybody is seeing into us. Then dirt is very dirty and purity is shining white.

Mostly I'm too damn busy to know how I feel.

Do you take pride in your hurt?" Samuel asked. "Does it make you seem large and tragic?" "I don't know." "Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

His mind grinned inward at itself.

When you're a child you're the centre of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you're your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It's worse, but it's much better too.

I think he didn't like himself, and when that is so the subject usually must find an area for dislike outside himself.

It would be a mistake to name them for qualities we think they have," Samuel said. "We might be wrong—so wrong. Maybe it would be good to give them a high mark to shoot at—a name to live up to. The man I'm named for had his name called clear by the Lord God, and I've been listening all my life. And once or twice I've thought I heard my name called—but not clear, not clear.

From start to finish I found no strangers. If I had, I might be able to report them more objectively. But these are my people and this my country. If I found matters to criticize and to deplore, they were tendencies equally present in myself.

I don't care what you do as long as I don't have anything to do with it. I guess no matter how weak and negative a good man is, he has as many sins on him as he can bear. I have enough sins to trouble me. Maybe they aren't very fine sins compared to some, but, the way I feel, they're all I can take care of. Please forgive me.

You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror. But that's not the worst. We think everybody is seeing into us. Then dirt is very dirty and purity is shining white. Aron, it will be over. Wait only a little while and it will be over.

It's like you said about knowing people. I hate her because I know why she went away. I know--because I've got her in me His head was down and his was voice was heartbroken. You've got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn't even be wondering if you didn't have it. Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Whatever you do, it will be you who do it--not your mother.

If it troubles us it must be that we find the trouble in ourselves.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

Cal's mind careened in anger at himself and in pity for himself. And then a new voice came into it, saying coolly and with contempt, "If you're being honest—why not say you are enjoying this beating you're giving yourself? That would be the truth. Why not be just what you are and do just what you do?" Cal sat in shock from this thought. Enjoying?—of course. By whipping himself he protected himself against whipping by someone else.

Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

You know pretty well that I don't think of myself as an individual who wants very much. That is why I am not a good nor consecutive seducer. I have the energy and when I think of it, the desires, but I can't reduce myself to a unit from which the necessary formula emanates.

The problem was I wasn't very good at things. Everybody knows somebody like that. And I was the guy I knew. I wasn't very dependable either. And I guess I didn't smell too good most of the time. I didn't have much going for me, to be honest.

be what you are. Don't try to be Sally or Johnny or Fred next door; be yourself.

He sounds to himself, saying this, like an impersonator; life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup.

The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation," he explained. "A human being is a very social creature, and ninety percent of what he does is done only because other people are watching. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?

It is imperative that you understand your own personality and emotional state at the time you enter into a new relationship.