Quotes About Self-awareness

Who am I? Oh, yes: I'm the kind of person who doesn't like fiction, country music, or cilantro. We use these defining truths to help us stay in the lines of ourselves. We think we have to hold on to these labels, we feel comfortable holding on to these labels, but it turns out the labels are removable, you can peel them right off.

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I'm essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous—not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slapstick comedy, but rather in the sense of a ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and most ordinary gestures. For example, I can never shave without starting to laugh; it seems so idiotic.

It doesn't take objectivity to know what you want, and you're not objective enough to know what you need.

If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?

I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.

That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is in my heart that matches my mind? I

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them.

Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising.

Ahora sabes por qué razón es inútil llorar. Tus lágrimas no se llevan tus penas, sino que alimentan la alegría de otros. Por eso has de aprender a tragártelas.

Pero yo estaba muy mimada por su culpa. Nunca me había enseñado a tener en cuenta sus sentimientos y por ello el ama sólo era para mí alguien que me ofrecía comodidad, como un ventilador en verano o una estufa en invierno, una bendición que sólo aprecias y quieres cuando ya no está presente.

I was returning with myself whole and unbroken—limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance

I threw my head back and smiled proudly to myself. And then I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts up. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents' wishes, but I would never forget myself.

Americans don't really look at one another when talking. They talk to their reflections. They look at others or themselves only when they think nobody is watching. So they never see how they really look. They see themselves smiling without their mouth open, or turned to the side where they cannot see their faults.

I'm not consciously hiding anything.' After Ruth said that she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritation, the fears? How tiresome that would be.

It was sad and beautiful knowledge that a person cannot be found elsewhere but in his own spirit.

you showed me who I truly am. You did not remove my doubts. You forced me to see how I waver.

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.

We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are

I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.

I believe that in judging our actions we are more severe than professional judges. We judge not only our actions, but our thoughts, our intentions, our secret curses, our hidden hate.

We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the 'I' behind the 'eye' that does the seeing.

We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.

I'm neurotic--in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.