56 quotes about Self-knowledge

The conqueror and king in each one of us is the knower of truth. Let the knower awaken in us and drive the horses of the mind, emotions, and physical body on the pathway which that king has chosen.

Arundale, George S.

There is a period of life when we swallow knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

Bailey, Pearl

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.

Baruch, Bernard M.

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand --like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery --in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.

Benjamin, Walter

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.

Billings, Josh

Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

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

Bradley, Francis H.

Self knowers always dwell in El Dorado; they drink from the fountain of youth, and at all times owners of all they wish to enjoy.

Bristol, Claude M.

One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.

Bristol, Claude M.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

Buck, Pearl S.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Camus, Albert

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.

Canetti, Elias

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it -- this is a hard lesson.

Catton, Bruce

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Charron, Pierre

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

Colton, Charles Caleb

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

Eckhart, Meister

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

Eliot, George

You have to know what's important and what's unimportant, for you.

Fink, David Harold

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

Franklin, Benjamin

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

Gurdjieff, George

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

Hopkins, Tom

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

Jung, Carl

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Kafka, Franz

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.

Kempis, Thomas

He knows the universe and does not know himself.

La Fontaine, Jean De

He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.

Lao-Tzu

Know they thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.

Lao-Tzu

To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world -- introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably -- that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

Lippmann, Walter

If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.

Madwed, Sidney

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Mansfield, Katherine

You can live a lifetime and at the end, know more about other people than you know about yourself.

Markham, Beryl

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc. with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.

Maslow, Abraham H.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Pope, Alexander

'Tis not need we know our every thought or see the work shop where each mask is wrought wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit and serve our jape's turn for a night or two.

Pound, Ezra

Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self.

Ralph, Blum

It is part of our pedagogy to teach the operations of thinking, feeling, and willing so that they may be made conscious. For if we do not know the difference between an emotion and a thought, we will know very little. We need to understand the components (of emotions) at work... in order to free their hold.

Richards, Mary Caroline

Our lives teach us who we are.

Rushdie, Salman

A true knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power.

Rutherford, Mark

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

Seneca

To know yourself, see how others do, to know others look into your own heart.

Smiles, Sydney

Know thyself.

Socrates

We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

Teresa of Avila, St.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

Thoreau, Henry David

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

Thoreau, Henry David

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.

Thoreau, Henry David

You never know yourself till you know more than your body.

Traherne, Thomas

Know yourself, master yourself, conquest of self is most gratifying.

Unknown, Source

I know myself, but that is all.

Unknown, Source

Before a man can wake up and find himself famous he has to wake up and find himself.

Unknown, Source

Analysis and synthesis ordinarily clarify matters for us about as much as taking a Swiss watch apart and dumping its wheels, springs, hands, threads, pivots, screws and gears into a layman's hands for reassembling, clarifies a watch to a layman.

Unknown, Source

Know one, know all.

Upanishad, Katha