Quotes About Self-awareness

This is my test: I imagine them back there in the moonlight with the ground all around us boiling with ants. Now, which one, the crooked walker, or the darling perfection? I know how they would choose. Any man who admires my body now is a traitor to the previous Adah. So there you are.

I needed no snake to tell me I didn't belong in that family or house, or life. I was the tree of knowledge.

She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It's not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don't go there, it's a trap.

Height isn't something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.

center, in bigger print: And if I die no soul will pity me. And why should they since I myself find in myself no pity to myself. I asked what it was

No man wants to hear he has been a fool.

since I myself find in myself no pity to myself.

Notably, it was not her fabled tenure as first lady, not the conquest of Paris or the myriad other triumphs of the White House years, not her demeanor at President Kennedy's funeral and what it had meant to so many Americans, that Jackie spoke of when she replied without hesitation: "I think it is that after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane. I am proud of that.

Feelings are your guide. Trust your feelings and learn to express them, and do not blame anyone for how you feel. Be yourself, observe yourself. Look to understand any crisis you have been in or will be in.

moment, and began muttering to himself.

Do all the people who know me know me better than I know myself?

Then she reached lower and started to ease my pants down. I stopped her so I could get my shoes and socks off first. Pants-pooled-at-the-ankles is too helpless a posture for me.

You could only remember your own mistake so as not to repeat it next time.

interesting how much insight you could have into your own pathologies, and how little impact the insight would have on your underlying needs. Or on your behavior.

Barry Eisler

But she was also uneasy. She remembered when she'd been in college and had come across the Nietzsche quote: Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

Being able to criticize our own certainties is often a painful struggle, demanding some courage as we try to stand back and impartially judge ourselves and our own responsibility.

The discrepancy between logic and memory suggests that we don't always know what we want.

decisions as trivial as renting a video become important if we believe that these decisions are revealing something significant about ourselves.

you will depend on how you do your accounting. People often talk jokingly about how "creative" accountants can make a corporate balance sheet look as good or as bad as they want it to look. Well, the point here is that we are all creative accountants when it comes to keeping our own psychological balance sheet.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them. We are not here to do what has already been done.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it—frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself. Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.

And what do you do when you can't use anger to fall back on? You admit the truth.