Quotes About Self-awareness

The character of the human being is empirical. Only through experience can one become acquainted with it, not merely with that of others, but also with one's own.

We must first learn from experience what we desire and what we can do. Till then we know it not, we are without character, and must often be driven back to our own way by hard blows from without. But if we have finally learnt it, then we have attained to what in the world is called character, the acquired character. This is accordingly nothing but the most perfect knowledge possible of our own individuality.

If your abilities are only mediocre, modesty is mere honesty; but if you possess great talents, it is hypocrisy.

one man will look another in the face, with the impudent assurance that he will never see anything but a miserable resemblance of himself; and this is just what he will see, as he cannot grasp anything beyond it. Hence the bold way in which one man will contradict another.

I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

It had to do with the way she lived, in the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and seemed to have no consulates.

She grew tired of living a life that wasn't really hers at an address she oughtn't to be at. She had lost the ability to keep her discrete world discrete. The traffic inside her head seemed to have stopped believing in traffic lights.

men are who they are. We try to make them into something they are not, and then are astonished when they turn out not to be what we wanted. We betray ourselves.

most, even at my young age of nine and twenty, and the

Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.

A Drunkard accuses a Drunkard... A sot became extremely drunk - his legs And head sank listless, weighed by wine's thick dregs. A sober neighbour put him in a sack And took him homewards hoisted on his back. Another drunk went stumbling by the first, Who woke and stuck his head outside and cursed. Hey, you, you lousy dipsomaniac, He yelled as he was borne off in the sack, If you'd had fewer drinks, just two or three, You would be walking now as well as me.

It disturbed me, however, to have felt so confident about what had happened that day and to have been so wrong.

People may hate being embarrassed and strive not to show it when they are, but embarrassment serves an important good.

I felt a sense of shame like a burning ulcer. This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.

The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.

We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared.

She taught me that women who want without needing are expensive and sometimes wasteful, but women who need without wanting are dangerous – they suck you in and pretend not to notice.

I learned that if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences.

If I can look directly at my life and my death without flinching I know there is nothing they can ever do to me again.

I feel not to be open about who I am in all respects places a certain kind of expectation on me I'm just not into meeting any more.

I feel, therefore I can be free.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others - for their use and our detriment.