Quotes About Awareness

Of course, it wasn't possible to account for all the time. By the time you had written down what time it was, it was already later than it had been.

Then I resolved myself and dove under. I felt my skin tighten all over, and realized how infrequently one felt conscious of one's whole body at once, as a continuous surface.

Why did I insist on blocking myself against the marrow of life? Wasn't this—this, being outside, here, negotiating with a handsome, possibly disabled mugger—wasn't this, the cigarette butts and melon guts in the gutter, the faint smell of horses, the sickening pulse of bass from the clubs—wasn't this what life was?

How could I miss him? I didn't even know him.

began to intuit dimly why people drank when they went dancing, and it occurred to me that maybe the reason preschool had felt the way it had was that one had had to go through the whole thing sober.

It was happening again now: some pieces of some larger story that I could barely make out were flying into new positions, and I was remembering things I had forgotten, and putting them together differently, and all while I was sitting still and not going anywhere or doing anything—though in another way I was hurtling north at five hundred miles an hour.

This Life is More than Just a read through.

Once I opened my mind to the concept of a greater power, I never struggled with it. Everywhere I went, I felt and saw the existence of a creative intelligence in this universe, of a loving power larger than myself in nature, in people, everywhere.

Youth is a clearer witness to the world.

Thoughts are like an open ocean, they can either move you forward within its waves, or sink you under deep into its abyss.

Thy left eye sees not right.

Proximity to reality induces feelings of emptiness, horror and depression. Do not approach it alone.

Identity seems to be non-existent at a personal level—at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves.

It could be said that the discovery of ourselves is at the heart of what we call enlightenment, which is to say that that big, bright light at the end of the tunnel is us. The problem is that no one wants to discover that we're no better or no worse than the rest—indeed, to discover that we're no different than the rest—because that's no fun.

Finally, it's not the lies we tell others that do the most damage, it's those we tell ourselves. From this all troubles rise.

This idea was carried forward by the British philosopher C.D. Broad who wrote: The function of the brain and the nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and otherwise irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

In short, the persons we see most clearly are not necessarily those we know best.

America has an internal enemy more deadly than any terrorist -- it's called ignorance.

Your first discovery when you travel," wrote Elizabeth Hardwick, "is that you do not exist." In other words, it is not just the others who have been left behind; it is all of you that is known. Gone is the power or punishment of your family name, the hard-earned reputations of forebears, no

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely,

There are things that are not yet true today, perhaps we dare not find them true, but tomorrow they may be. So every man whose fate is to go his individual way must proceed with hopefulness and watchfulness, ever conscious of his loneliness and its dangers

It is indeed no small matter to know one's own guilt and one's own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one's shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favourable position – we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves