Quotes About Self-knowledge

A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.

angrier and angrier, that he had to do such things because men were filled with arrogant greed, because some wished to rule with neither the wit nor the self-knowledge to see their inadequacies—and how many of their people would die.

It is pure fatalism, undiluted by environmental variability. Good living, good medicine, healthy food, loving families or great riches can do nothing about. Your fate is in your genes. Like a pure Augustinian, you go to heaven by God's grace, not by good works. It reminds us that the genome, great book that it is, may give us the bleakest kind of self-knowledge: the knowledge of our destiny, not the kind of knowledge that you can do something about, but the curse of Tiresias.

It reminds us that the genome, great book that it is, may give us the bleakest kind of self-knowledge: the knowledge of our destiny, not the kind of knowledge that you can do something about, but the curse of Tiresias.

It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.

Pain cannot be avoided, and experience with pain is the greatest source of self-knowledge we have.

Ask yourself what you would require to be motivated to undertake the job, honestly, and listen to the answer. Don't tell yourself, "I shouldn't need to do that to motivate myself." What do you know about yourself? You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can't even set the clock on your microwave. Don't over-estimate your self-knowledge.

Telling a joke is like doing a linguistic pirouette. If you fall flat, it means not only that you don't have the wherewithal to do it well but also that you have misjudged your own skill, that you are fool enough to undertake something you can't finish -- and that lack of self-control or self-knowledge is a lack of grace.

As the blazing fire reduces wood to ashes, similarly, the fire of Self-knowledge reduces all Karma to ashes.

Self-knowledge can, and ought, to apply not only to the soul, but also to the body; the man without insight into the fabric of his body has no knowledge of himself. —JOHN MOIR, student of anatomy, notes from opening lecture, Anatomical Education in a Scottish University, 1620

This self-knowledge is crucial because we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature, our own interests, and our own values.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility

It's about time we stop mistaking self-knowledge for self-absorption—and realize that nobody has a monopoly on selfishness.

Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. * Know not your enemy yet know yourself, and you shall win half your battles. * Know neither the enemy nor yourself, and you shall surely lose every fight.

People actively seek to filter out painful stimuli, and while this may help them limit distress, it can also sharply distort their actual environment. "If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves," wrote Aldous Huxley, "it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.

Desengáñate: de una cosa -aunque sea la mejor cosa del mundo- sólo pueden sacarse...cosas. Nadie es capaz de dar lo que no tiene, ¿verdad?, ni mucho menos nada puede dar más de lo que es.

Lear] is the universal image of the unwisdom and destructiveness of paternal love at its most ineffectual, implacably persuaded of its own benignity, totally devoid of self-knowledge, and careening onward until it brings down the person it loves best, and its world as well.

The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her.

Destiny has always been something that interested me as a subject, but not in a fatalistic way because I believe that one can transform destiny through self-knowledge.