Quotes & Sayings About Knowing Oneself

I look at myself but I'm missing. I know myself: it's not me. — Fernando Pessoa

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing. — Lewis Hyde

As you begin to Awaken.. You discover yourself sitting in nature.. flowing like the river.. Trying to understand the purpose.. then realizing "Nature is Happening, that is its purpose".. You are just like the river flowing through nature.. Your purpose is to be like nature. Start Now.. in the precious moments.. for its the only time that exists. — Jonathan Bailey

It is perhaps one's own fault, to see oneself drifting, rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility of a decent human being. — George Orwell

The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself. — Criss Jami

Learning to locate your own gut response is essential if you are to be able to identify and acknowledge your intuition. — Laurie Nadel

As I awaken in the mornings I have visions... in the moment, the sun is either going to set or its going to rise... because if it should not do either.. the planet would not evolve. We are all apart of the Universe.. for if we do or we don't will have the same impact. — Jonathan Bailey

We are in fact living organisms that exist in a living universe — L.J. Vanier

Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can't put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do you hair with any sort of fun or joy if you're doing it from a position of correction. — Kevyn Aucoin

If you know who you are then your ego feels safe instead of fearful, and is more open to exploration. — Julia Woodman

Be patient with yourself; trust in the Universe; find mentors; know that you can achieve whatever you set out to do. — Diane L. Dunton

Ingredients to success: know what you do well, know what to do well, and know someone who's swell. — Criss Jami

To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Knowing something for oneself or for communication to an expert colleague is not the same as knowing it for explanation to a student. — Hyman Bass

Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one's self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself. — Michel De Montaigne

One could never know anything except through desire, real desire, which was not the same thing as greed or lust; a pure, painful and primitive desire, a longing for everything that was not in oneself, a torment of the flesh, that carried one beyond the limits of one's mind to other times and other places, and even, if one was lucky, to a place where there was no border between oneself and one's image in the mirror. — Amitav Ghosh

If, on the contrary, they hear from you about themselves, they will be in no position to say, "The Lord is lying." Is hearing the truth about oneself from you anything different from knowing oneself? And can anyone have this self-knowledge and still protest, "It is not true," unless he himself is lying? — Augustine Of Hippo

Understanding of oneself is the first act in establishing a transformative philosophy for living a vivid and a reflective existence. Knowing thy self is essential to designing and instigating a meaningful life that is self-directed instead of exclusively controlled by innate traits and external determinates. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Badassery: 1. (noun) the practice of knowing one's own accomplishments and gifts, accepting one's own accomplishments and gifts and celebrating one's own accomplishments and gifts; 2. (noun) the practice of living life with swagger : SWAGGER (noun or verb) a state of being that involves loving oneself, waking up "like this" and not giving a crap what anyone else thinks about you. Term first coined by William Shakespeare. — Shonda Rhimes

Shakespeare is getting flyblown; a paternal government might well forbid writing about him, as they put his monument at Stratford beyond the reach of scribbling fingers. With all this buzz of criticism about, one may hazard one's conjectures privately, make one's notes in the margin; but, knowing that someone has said it before, or said it better, the zest is gone. Illness, it its kingly sublimity, sweeps all that aside and leaves nothing but Shakespeare and oneself. — Virginia Woolf

Knowing God involves, first, listening to God's Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God's nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship. — J.I. Packer

We rally about one side not doing what the other side should be, whereas the other side feels the same way.. When both have not figured out that one has to be different than the other for the other to be attracted.

Apply this in every way along your day.. Either way your right — Jonathan Bailey

...the whole 'know thyself' thing isn't a journey to a fixed destination. Learning about myself changes me, forcing me to learn more. 'Know thyself' isn't a goal; it's a road. — Garon Whited

Questioning authority doesn't make you resistant; who should follow blindly without knowing the destination — LDarnell

To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what's is so painful you can't sense your powers leaving you. It's hard for an old man to ensure such blows! — Ivan Turgenev

How to recognize what is real? To know the layers and depths of oneself, to know how to open, to know how to fill a capacious hold-all, to know one's own quirks and nervous twitches, cravings and transparencies, and, above all the force, literally the force, of events, connections, the wild calm in every thing. — Shawna Lemay

wisdom is great, but sometimes, those who think they are wiser than others can become the otherwise — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Find comfort in questioning yourself. — Bryant McGill

The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background ... In due course one even grows immune to larger stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care has only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether. — Eugen Herrigel

Forget living a long life cause I don't see that happening with me living a life of misery, neglect, and pain. So I just want to die happy. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself. — Galileo Galilei

If you least understand the essence of timely and courageously saying no to what you have to say no to, when you have to say no, you shall always say yes to what is due no remorsefully and count the cost of never saying no when you had to in pity though shall know your had I know in the end. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Truly being authentic is knowing what matters to you, on the deepest level of who you are, and committing always to act from that authentic center. — Richie Norton

What we did yesterday, Can be changed today to make tomorrow different.. PAST / PRESENT / FUTURE
Precious Present Moments Light Our Path — Jonathan Bailey

Most traditional methods of working on oneself are mostly pain centered. People get to repeat over and over their painful emotions without knowing how to use the body's own inherently positive direction and force. — Eugene Gendlin

[...]You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots."

I took another sip of the martini. "You don't know me."

At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled.

"Maybe," Seven said, "but neither do you. — Jodi Picoult

One has to see oneself through one's actions, works, and mind. Knowing the Self by the self is not as easy as writing that line. A # yogi sees things in every movement he makes, maybe when practicing, maybe when teaching, or maybe when talking to people. You should have courage in your convictions and pursue what is dear to you all these years. — B.K.S. Iyengar

How frustrating to think you can be lost to yourself. And yet how often it is that a stranger stares back at you from the mirror. Maybe in truth we never see ourselves as clearly as the thousands of eyes that daily take us in. — Richelle E. Goodrich

One pays a price for innovation, and innovators, knowing this, are hardly conciliators: books are not written specifically to please others; they are written, like it or not, to please oneself. — Alexis Lykiard

To know oneself means above all to know what one likes — Marty Rubin

We can only speak the truth that we know at the time it is known. — Sharon Lee

Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled. — Kate Bolick

If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow
you are not understanding yourself. — Bruce Lee

Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind
ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself
confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported. — Albert Camus

Passion is the journey inward.. Purpose is the journey overcoming the fear.. Know Freedom and Leave Your Legend. — Jonathan Bailey

Your spiritual path isn't always just something you find, you started it the moment you took your first breath, and ever since you're been getting closer and closer to remembering who you truly are! — Martin R. Lemieux

To fix hearts one must know one's own. — Will Advise

Love is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself.
Love is overflowing joy.
Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from Existence.
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being.
Fear is the opposite of love. In love, one expands. In fear, one shrinks. In fear, one becomes closed. In love, one opens.
In fear, one doubts. In love, one trusts.
Do not be afraid, this Existence is not your enemy. This existence loves you, this existence is ready to support you in any way.
Trust and you will feel a new overflowing energy. That energy is love. That energy wants to bless the whole existence. Because of this energy, one feels blessed.
Love is a deep desire to bless the whole Existence. — Swami Dhyan Giten

My takeaway from all of Ophelia's sessions was that life favored value. The world was bursting with opportunity. If you didn't like who you were, it was time to reinvent yourself and try again. It was a disservice to the universe to cheat everyone of your talents. And if you were at your wit's end, thinking you had nothing to offer, it was essential to cultivate value within yourself in order to move forward. In order to live beyond existence. In order to turn your pain into something beautiful. — Fran Seen

If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the present-at-hand by observing it, then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to-do with the world concernfully. When concern holds back from any kind of producing, manipulating and the like, it puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode of just tarrying-alongside. In this kind of 'dwelling' as a holding-oneself-back from any manipulation or utilization, the perception of the present-at-hand is consummated. — Martin Heidegger

She had discovered early that what we want out of life can change; that the important thing is to learn to recognize or even simply just to admit what we really want, and then to have the courage to reach for it. — Candice Proctor

When ppl say they got ur back. Is like saying I'll pray for u. They don't actually do it. It just sounds good at the moment. Depend on self. — J. Wrice Sr.

Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else, compared to theory. — Franz Grillparzer

She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women's lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act. — Anne Fortier

In a few seconds, we judge another person and think we know them. When, the person we've lived with the longest, we still don't know very well - ourselves. — Charles F. Glassman

A small world where people know each other, and still so deep, able to get lost. — Anthony Liccione

There is such a thirst to be known, isn't there? What is it about being known that would cause us to hunger so much after it, at any cost? I'm afraid too many of us have forgotten that far more noble is the journey that one embarks on to know oneself; than the trip one goes on in the search for fame. Isn't it better to know and to know and to know yourself and if your heart is found to be noble, isn't it better that you know this on your own and truly; rather than for you to chase after the thoughts that others might have of you? To be a true royal in heart is better than to be a false royal with a throne. — C. JoyBell C.

The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful. — Oscar Wilde

How well do we actually know ourselves? Can we dare to say that we really know someone, like really, really know them? — Nico J. Genes

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right, nor do Two Rights Make a Left.

Which ever side you think is Correct. Great. That is what resonates with your perception... Dive deep within yourself to discover why you think you need to judge or change the person in your perception.. when the real change is the reflection in the mirror..reflected by the person you are trying to change... out of fear. Fear is the negative energies keeping you from the light of truth.

Be Yourself and Honor others for who they are. If we were all the same.. the world wouldn't have so many pretty colors and changes. — Jonathan Bailey

Be happy with who you are and what you do, and you can do anything you want. — Steve Maraboli

We repeat the shout of the Universe. You and I blend together. You are one word and I am another. — Robin Rumi

Looking at oneself in a mirror is a self-canceling phenomenon. Eyes looking into eyes make a hole which spreads out and renders one invisible. I had seen more of myself in that single glimpse of a ghostly image in the pier mirror, not knowing it was I. — Walker Percy

A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself. — Laura Riding

Often times it is difficult to rely on your judgment when the focus on your true objective is out of alignment. — Mark W. Boyer

It's him, I feel it. — Nikki Rowe

On hashish, he saw the elaborate furnishings of the nineteenth-century bourgeois interior concentrating to satanic contentment, satanic knowing, satanic calm ... To live in these interiors was to have woven a dense fabric about oneself, to have secluded oneself within a spider's web, in whose toils world events hang loosely suspended like so many insect bodies sucked dry. — Daniel Pinchbeck

Free your mind, become who you are.. the mind is the biggest drug.. and everyone is addicted. — Jonathan Bailey

It is what it is because it has to be...

So you notice your not having the best of days, you ache more, your ill more, whatever negativity it might be...

Remember. You have to have it to have the opposite.

What is required is to listen to yourself, listen to what your body is saying at the present moment.. And accept it as balance. — Jonathan Bailey

Because the true perfection of a practical occupation consists not only in knowing the actual performance of the occupation but also in its explanation, why the work is done a in a particular way, and because the art of calculating is a practical occupation, it is clear that it is pertinent to concern oneself with the theory. — Gersonides

Empowerment is the inner joy of knowing that external force isn't necessary to be at harmony with oneself. — Wayne Dyer

Self respect by definition is a confidence and pride in knowing that your behaviour is both honorable and dignified. Therefore when you harass or vilify another person, you not only disrespect them, but you also. -Respect yourself by respecting others. — Miya Yamanouchi

Magine a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself, that doesn't need to be proved or demonstrated, that is able to contain uncertainty. People sometimes put their trust in a spiritual leader and are terribly betrayed if that person then fails to live up to ideals. But a real trust of faith would be to decide whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because life and personality are never without shadow. The vulnerability that faith demands could be matched by an equal trust in oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal. — Thomas Moore

Gape long enough into a looking glass and you'll eventually see beauty. The same can be said of self-analysis, and as soon as one apes oneself, a second monkey is born. — Anthony Marais

I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing ... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place. — Morris L. West

Connecting with yourself and knowing yourself is a monumental and life changing event. — Bryant McGill

The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. — Ramana Maharshi

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Thus knowing oneself is no less, and may be more, of a requirement than understanding the enemy. — Martin Van Creveld

The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after. — Benito Mussolini

Where you've been or haven't been does not make you who you are." -Faolan — Brittany L. Engels

True freedom is the gift of the Spirit, the result of grace: but, precisely because it is freedom FOR as well as freedom FROM, it isn't simply a matter of being forced now to be good, against our wills and without our cooperation, but a matter of being released from slavery precisely into responsibility, into being able at last to choose, to exercise moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the Spirit is at work within, that God himself is doing that which I too am doing. — N. T. Wright

I have to figure out why I worked at a job I hated for years. I have to find out why I can't see what everyone else sees in me. I don't feel beautiful. When I look in the mirror, I never saw beautiful. For this to happen to someone like me, it's devastating, Jonas. I don't want you to think it's vanity, it isn't. I can't see me and I need to be able to do that. I need to find out what I'm like and what I want. I have to be comfortable in my own skin before I can be in a relationship the way you want. — Christine Feehan

Sometimes it's only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure - symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other. — Alexandra Katehakis

The most important aspect of leading is knowing oneself. Know yourself, know the people around you, and then get on with it. — Mervyn Davies

Stubbornness is knowing exactly what you want courageously living by free will; never to be judged or ridiculed. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces. — Erich Fromm

Real success in the kingdom of God is not about being strong and looking good and knowing all the right answers. It's about continually yielding oneself to Jesus and determining to take purposeful little steps of obedience, and the ragged reality that it's all about God and His grace at work in us. — Mary Beth Chapman

Real integrity comes from knowing oneself and believing in truth, without compromise, and no matter how challenging. Integrity is a beautiful thing. — Sameh Elsayed

Self-denial means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself. It means no longer seeing oneself, only him who is going ahead, no longer seeing the way which is too difficult for us. Self-denial says only: he is going ahead; hold fast to him. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness. — Joyce Carol Oates

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation. — Graham Greene

The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It feels nice to know about things and about oneself. — Aporva Kala

Knowing how to free oneself is nothing; the difficult thing is knowing how to live with that freedom. — Andre Gide

I wasn't crying, but my heart was crying. I wasn't feeling, but my heart was bleeding. Now I am crying, but my heart is healing. I am learning that I know nothing. — Benyf

The power of getting to know one another is so immense, eclipsed only by first getting to know ourselves. — Bryant McGill

To search for a solutions, knowing that the problem is insoluble; to serve, while smiling at what one serves; to subject oneself to an iron discipline, without end and without profit; to write, in the profound conviction that one's work has no importance; to know, to understand, and to tolerate, while constantly bearing in mind the painful uselessness of being right ... — Henry De Montherlant