Quotes About Self-awareness

The real therapy only begins when the patient sees that it is no longer father and mother who are standing in his way, but himself . .

I once had a conversation with the director of a monastery. "Everyone who comes to us," he said, "does so for the wrong reasons." The same is generally true of people who become psychotherapists. It is sometimes possible to persuade people to be come psychotherapists who have not chosen the profession for their own personal reasons; but, for the most part, we have to put up with what we get; namely, ourselves.

With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.

I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

I say 'told myself' because—and this became clearer to me later, I didn't know this back then, I wasn't wise to it—to put it bluntly, we never really know why we do what we do. The part of our brains tasked with generating reasons doesn't care about truth… only plausibility.

People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.

The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!

Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.

It is not sufficient to tell native kids to be proud of who they are if we do not also at the same time tell them who they are. The struggle in connecting young people to their traditions is compounded by a school system that consistently provides opportunities to learn about others but very few for native kids to learn about themselves. We have a lot of work to do.

What wisdom and what virtue there is in judging oneself truly and in remaining oneself! You have a part that only you can play; and your business is to play it to perfection, instead of trying to force fortune. Our lives are not interchangeable. Equally by aiming too high and by falling too low, one misses the path to the goal. Go straight ahead, in your own way, with God for guide.

I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and ask, 'Am I a sex symbol?' Then I go back to bed again. It's stupid to think that way.

If bad things are going to be said about me, I have to bear that. If I don't understand that it's part of being in show business, then I'd better go work in a bank.

I wouldn't want my daughters to date a guy like me. I was dangerous around women in my twenties. I'm terrified that they might end up with someone like me.

My practicality consists in this, in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall - that is my strength, my only strength.

This Narcissus of ours Can't see his face in the mirror Because he has become the mirror.

it disconcerts him not to be immune to the weakness that he finds so unpleasant in others.

Era asombrosa la amplitud de lo que uno mismo era capaz de no ver tan solo empeñándose en una ceguera más rigurosa todavía porque era voluntaria.

He had so little experience, or so little capacity for real introspection, he didn't imagine the guilt and anguish lying in wait; he didn't even ask himself what Judith Biely might be feeling. She didn't exist for him in an autonomous, complete way but only as a projection of his own desire

You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide.

When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller.

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

Not using faults does not mean that one does not have them.