Quotes About Self-awareness

Yet she was determined that when she married she would not forget who she was and who her people were. She would not affect any airs.

the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them.

suddenly realised that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary, unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing:

She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for reveling in the misfortunes of another.

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course we think that we do; indeed we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them, so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?

And when I say "the least of us", or even "the weaker brethren", I do not mean other people, you know: I mean myself.

If you have enemies, then your biggest enemy is yourself. Do you know that, Mma?

The real art in going through life with dignity and with a modicum of happiness was to accept what you were, and, at the same time, to accept others—and to love them all equally.

one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for revelling in the misfortunes of another.

You'll grow up. People did not like to be told that, she thought, because we all think that what we are now is what we shall be tomorrow. That was clearly false—but we all believed it.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

I am a Count, Not a Saint.

Why, in truth, sir, was Monte Cristo's reply, man is but an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? — do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?

I'm not proud, but I'm happy, and I think happiness makes a man even blinder than pride.

Happy! who can answer for that? Happiness or unhappiness is the secret known but to oneself…

Anger is the mirror image of fear. It begins as fear, and is expressed outwardly as anger.

He has the self-conscious look of someone drinking alone who is trying not to appear self-conscious.

Who you pretends you is, you comes to be. The bigger what bows to the Master on the street, who acts the fool, who forgets who he am, that man a slave. He shuts his bible, he deserves to be a slave

I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you like her after she tells you she isn't into it. You should not keep riding your bike by her house either.

First, he became aware of it. Many of us don't seem able to take even this step. Second, and most significant, he chose not to focus on reinforcing its weaker threads. Instead, he did the exact opposite: He identified its strongest threads, wove in education and experience, and built them into the dominating strengths we see today.

If your senses are numbed with delusion and denial, you will stop looking for these true strengths and wind up living a second-rate version of someone's life rather than a worldclass version of your own

But not unlike the gremlins in the film of the same name who were transformed into nasty little critters if they were splashed or if they were fed after midnight, irrelevant nontalents can mutate into real weaknesses under one condition: As soon as you find yourself in a role that requires you to play to one of your nontalents-or area of low skills or knowledge-a weakness is born.

The point here is not that you should always forgo this kind of weakness fixing. The point is that you should see it for what it is: damage control, not development. And as we mentioned earlier, damage control can prevent failure, but it will never elevate you to excellence.

We may say that morality, as well as good sense, is the best distributed thing in the world, for all think themselves so well endowed with both that even those who are hardest to please in everything else do not usually desire more of them than they possess.