Quotes About Self-awareness

What made you wanted was nothing you did, it was something that you had, and how could you ever tell whether you had it?

Isn't it true that all the people I know in the world so far are hardly more than puppets for me, serving the glossy contrivings of my imagination?

Folks that don't understand that our safety is born of their not seeing who we are and what we are, as long as we see ourselves clearly and understand that their chatter about us is fully ignorant and not to be considered.

He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.

I knew my mother's limitations because they formed the marrow of my bones.

between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn't mean the weaker one doesn't love the stronger one, she'd pleaded...for my mother what mattered was that as she spoke, she had suddenly identified herself as the weaker one. This revalation sent her reeling. What had she thought all those years but the opposite?

He had had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.

What is the purpose of memory? Is it a trick to make sure we don't forget who we are by reminding us of who we were?

If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.

We'll, you know how nigger is. Can't nobody tell 'em nothing even today. Can't be rule. Every nigger you see got a kingdom in his head.

I'm not lesbian; I'm not bisexual; I'm not straight. I'm just curious.

Well, I say, we all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.

No one escapes a time in life when the arrow of sorrow, of anger, of despair pierces the heart. For many of us, there is the inevitable need to circle the wound. It is often such a surprise to find it there, in us, when we had assumed arrows so painful only landed in the hearts of other people. Some of us spend decades screaming at the archer. Or at least for longer periods than are good for us. How to take the arrow out of the heart? How to learn to relieve our own pain? That is the question.

It is a way of saying you must not live too much in your head. It is a way of reminding you to stay in your emotions, no matter how nutty they are; it is a way of saying, also, that craziness has value.

We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.

If you know your heart sorry, I say, that mean it not quite as spoilt as you think.

Because I know. Grown-up white men don't want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute.

Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall

You must harmonize your own heart... Only you will know how you can do that; for each of us it is different. Then harmonize, as much as this is ever possible, your surroundings.

An American, I said, sighing, but understanding my love of my adopted country perhaps for the first time: an American looks like a wounded person whose wound is hidden from others, and sometimes from herself. An American looks like me.

hadn't realized I was so ignorant, Celie. The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble! And to think Miss Beasley always said I was the smartest child she ever taught! But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know.

Some women are just better at knowing what they want, which saves them the trouble of wasting too much time on the wrong guy.

Rich is not writing about transcending this world... But about transforming it. Here, and now. And what hope do we have of changing the world if we can't change our sorry-ass selves? As wisdom tends to do, the poem reveals something very simple that's been here all along: We are not the center of everything. But we are a part of everything.