Quotes About Self-awareness

Some men just aren't cut for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

I know my limits. No one knows their limits till they've gone beyond them.

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.... The friction tends to arise when the tow are not the same....There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. that's soul destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.

People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

And . . . do you have any supporting evidence for your explanation of yourself? Certainly. Miles stared thoughtfully into the air, as if about to pull his words from the thinnest part.

The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror.

Could he stop denying himself, and deny others instead? He tested the phrases on his tongue. No, you are wrong, all of you, Temple and Court and folk in the streets. You always were wrong. I am not…am not… what? And are these the only terms I can think in, these shouted nos? Ah, habit.

Did you imagine you controlled it? Omniscient and omnipotent? Nobody appointed you God, Vorkosigan." Ghostly faint, one corner of his mouth turned up. "I'm sure it was an oversight." He leaned back and closed his eyes.

He consoled himself with the reflection that it was seldom he found himself in company who made him feel this stupid. It was probably good for his soul.

Ista flushed. "I am afraid I have no talent for"—she swallowed—"dalliance. When I was young I was too stupid. Now I'm old, I am too drab." Too stupid then too mad then too drab then too late. "I'm just not the sort.

it indicates a deep confusion of thinking to mistake one's own discomfort for a benefit to another.

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

Oh look! I'm one of those!

That's what I mean," said Ilka. "We are, all of us, ridiculous. All we can hear is somebody saying we are less than perfect. And it's not as if we hadn't already got that figured out for ourselves." "I never mind being told when I'm wrong." Ilka said, "Will you forgive me if I don't believe you?

For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds.

Good healthy anger that is blocked can then seem like feral rage. But when you accept it and work with it, it becomes the ability to stand up for yourself. If you do not intentionally cultivate your best attention in your native state, then you will tend to recapitulate the worst attention your kindergarten teacher or parent gave—disapproval, criticism, scrutiny.

A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything.

I always do the wrong. I do the wrong thing so much that the times I actually do the right thing stand out so brightly in my memory that I forget I always do the wrong thing.

Like everyone he knew, he could discern the hollowness in people's charm only when it was directed at someone other than himself.

Mave believed that not being able to see your life clearly, to scrutinize it intelligently, meant that probably you were at the dead center of it, and that couldn't possibly be a bad thing.

The thought balloon of my own breath said, How have I found myself here?

I loved to say quasi. I was saying it now a lot, instead of sort of, or kind of, and it had become a tic. I am quasi ready to go, I would announce. Or, I'm feeling a bit quasi today. Murph called me Quasimodo. Or Kami-quasi. Or wild and quasi girl.

It's not that men fear intimacy,' I said to Eleanor. 'It's that they're hypochondriacs of intimacy: They always think they have it when they don't. Gerard thinks we're very close but half the time he's talking to me like he met me forty-five minutes ago, telling me things about himself I've known for years, and asking me questions about myself that he should know the answers to already. Last night he asked me what my middle name was. God, I can't talk about it.