Quotes About Self-awareness

Dévorer les livres, comme je l'ai fait depuis ma plus tendre enfance, n'est qu'une forme de paresse. Je laisse à d'autres le soin de s'exprimer à ma place. Je cherche partout la confirmation de ce qui fermente et agit en moi, mais c'est avec mes mots à moi que je devrais essayer d'y voir clair. (45)

If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

We care more for our possessions with which we hope to make our way in the world than with our thoughts and dreams which tell us who we are in the world.

My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move.

But sooner or later we find that not everything is to our liking in this book. It starts out sweet to our taste; and then we find it doesn't sit well with us at all, it becomes bitter in our stomachs. Finding ourselves in this book is most pleasant, flattering even, and then we find that the book is not written to flatter us, but to involve us in a reality, God's reality, that doesn't cater to our fantasies of ourselves.

But there is an older wisdom that puts it differently: by changing our behavior we can change our feelings.

Todos deveriam conhecer a verdade de que ninguém é dotado de tamanha prudência e sabedoria a ponto de ser adequado a si mesmo na orientação de sua própria vida espiritual. A soberba é um guia cego e engana a muitos. A luz de nosso próprio julgamento é fraca e não conseguimos prever todos os perigos ou armadilhas e erros aos quais estamos propensos na vida do espírito.

In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.

We must pray who we actually are, not who we think we should be.

These labels are inevitable and in many ways useful but the common element to them is that they are impersonal and partial; when they become all-encompassing, which they too frequently do, they distort our core identity. They say almost nothing, or what is even worse, the wrong thing, about who we actually are.

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors.

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

T]he pinnacle of humanity lies in its ability to be disgusted with itself. What really separates us from other forms of life is our ability to detest our kind, to recognize the stupidity of being human. I spite, therefore I am.

Happiness in myself makes me apprehensive.

There are some words that seem to well up from inside me without reason. I will be walking along an empty hallway, leaning against the wall of an elevator, looking at the ceiling of my apartment when I find myself saying, "sorry." But I am not saying it to anyone else, it is only for the sound of the word, the feel of it.

If we rush ceaselessly through disconnected activities without checking in on our moods or motives, we can lose track of ourselves; in a sense, we lose the ability to experience our experiences. A

Negative and positive are not two aspects of energy and consciousness: they are one and the same. Whatever particles of energy and consciousness in your self have turned negative must be reconverted into their original positive way of being. This cannot be accomplished without fully taking responsibility for the negativity in you.

but what I am not interested in, Ms. Clipboard- or Mr. Canker or Mrs. Murmur or Call-me-Carol, all of you- is your questions; even your pointing and tipping Enoch pencils have six sides, my dear definers: pay heed whereon you pinch!; I am interested, almost exclusively, in being interested, and your reductivist probings are only intended to cordon off wings of my mansion;

L]et them be their own Rorschach tests[.]

I'm probably projecting. I'm a projector. For example: The world is not terrible. I just keep thinking it is.

Answers are found within, opinions are found outside.

My mind is always going. I'm always thinking what I need to do, what I haven't done, what I did do, what I didn't do as well as I could - I'm relentless that way with myself.

I'll be relentless in my efforts to be great, but I'm realistic. I know I can't be perfect because I've seen it. But at the same time, nobody wants to fail, nobody wants to fail.