Quotes About Self-awareness

even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of - do you want to know? - you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn't that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: 'No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.

And to contend with the whole world is a comfort, but to contend with oneself dreadful.

No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual...

Time stands still and I with it. All the plans I form fly straight back at me, when I want to spit in my own face.

What shall it profit the sick man to imagine himself, as all men do, to be well, if the physician says he is sick!

A man's life is wasted when he lives on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows, that he never becomes decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, that is, he never is aware in the deepest sense that there is a God.

Most men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes – but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

In the first case, he personally enjoyed the esthetic; in the second case, he esthetically enjoyed his personality.

The only fundamental basis for understanding is that one himself becomes what he understands and one understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands.

People do say that now to know oneself is a deception and an imperfection, but often they are unwilling to understand that someone who actually knows himself perceives precisely that he is not capable of anything at all

If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.

he was a cithara-player, not a man.

Fortvivlelsens Misforhold er ikke et simpelt Misforhold, men et Misforhold i et Forhold, der forholder sig til sig selv, og er sat af et Andet, saa Misforholdet i hiint for sig værende Forhold tillige reflekterer sig uendeligt i Forholdet til den Magt, som satte det.

life has always in store analogous phenomena which perhaps one will not escape. Sympathy one must have; but this sympathy is genuine only when one knows oneself deeply and knows that what has happened to one man may happen to all. Only thus can one be of some utility to oneself and to others.

Every person shudders at becoming a personality, shudders at standing as a personality vis-à-vis others?he shudders at it because he knows very well that this makes it possible for the others to catch sight of him. The human being shudders at becoming manifest; thus he loves, if not pitch darkness, then at any rate twilight, mystification, impersonality.

Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?

To strive against the whole world is a comfort, to strive with oneself is dreadful.

man who lives under his own supervision, alone in the whole world

Surrounded by hordes of people, busy with all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world – such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too risky to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, part of the crowd.

Si quien va a obrar pretende juzgarse antes a sí mismo por el resultado, no comenzará nunca.

Self-reflection is always an early step to healing, and forgiveness is the soul's sweetest healing.

If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.