Quotes & Sayings About Knowing Your Limits

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We depend upon cognitive assent and affective assurances to substantiate the reality of our relationship with God. If we can't "know" or "feel" God, we customarily doubt our relationship with God. But such "knowing" and "feeling" restrict God to the narrow limits of our minds and senses and reduce our relationship with God to the maintenance of such feedback. — M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

Empowerment is a thing that you earn over time - as you overcome obstacles, learn, and accomplish things, you become empowered. Empowerment is not a thing that you are born with and that the parent's job is to get out of the way of. Empowerment is a thing that you earn. And some of that is that you become empowered by knowing that you were disempowered or by knowing that there were tremendous limits on what you were able to do, as a young person. — John Roderick

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

He grinned again. We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my room, I felt like we'd somehow skipped the formalities of the Beginning of a Relationship: those awkward moments when you're not all over each other and are still feeling out the other person's boundaries and limits. Maybe this was because we'd been circling each other for a while before he finally catapulted through my window. But if I let myself think about it much - and I didn't - I had flashes of realising that I'd been comfortable with him even at the very start. Clearly, he'd been comfortable with me, grabbing my hand as he had that first day. As if he knew, even then, that we'd be here now. — Sarah Dessen

CHAPTER VI
Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability
LET no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I definitely think there's a lot of pressure for teenaged girls and guys to hook up on prom. I think it comes with the belief that you have to lose your virginity before you go to college. It's a coming of age thing. I think it's really sad because it has nothing to do with what you want and everything to do with peer pressure. But it comes with the territory of prom. Thankfully more and more kids are knowing their limits, and I think we're raising kids to be really good people, and they're realizing that they don't need to do it just because. — Brittany Snow

And health in art - what is that? It has nothing to do with a sane criticism of life. There is more health in Baudelaire than there is in [Kingsley]. Health is the artist's recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. It is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses - whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment with their glories - knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another's method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. The delight is like that given to us by music - for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring. — Oscar Wilde

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools. — R. Scott Bakker

They are young and life has no limits. Nothing is impossible, nothing beyond doing or knowing. The world is theirs and everything in it. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Hunger limits you because you are constantly thinking about getting food, keeping the food if you do get your hands on some, and not knowing when you are going to eat next. — Saroo Brierley

Reference to the deadness of the past is a way of staking a claim on it. But historians must be open, as ethnographers try to be, to the shock of the unpredictability and difference of the past, which means open to the possibility of the past living in its insistence on telling its own story and so confounding us. Only in this way can the past teach us something new about ourselves, about the limits of our imaginings and ways of knowing, and even of our particular and distinctive ways of being human. — Robert A. Orsi

I'm learning how to keep my identity and personal life sacred. It's a matter of knowing my limits. I don't have to give everything that's asked of me. — Mary Lambert

It is important for a woman to first, understand her man and his emotional limits. She must then not force him to communicate in a level that is foreign to him but rather in a way that brings meaning to the relationship. This means slowly building on a foundation while slowly increasing communication lines. The more a woman pushes the more a man will pull. Knowing a man's emotional limits will allow a woman to intentionally assert her communication needs, gracefully. — A.H. Carlisle III

I have a certain sensibility that I bring to my writing that comes from knowing two things: what I as a reader like to read, and what as a writer I am capable of. I know my own limits. I know there are things I cannot do. — Paullina Simons

There's a fine line between being stupid and knowing you have to test your limits if you want to do any real living at all. — Karen Marie Moning

objective physical science methodology will never permit us to know a man; that such methodology limits us merely to knowing about a man. — Mark Clifton

I don't know why I didn't have this sixth sense or whatever it is all along, but part of me thinks maybe it means I'm growing up, evolving into a real superhero. Like maybe the world knew I couldn't handle it before, but now, now I'm finally becoming me an the world know sit -- or maybe I'm just learning to listen to myself. — Kelly Thompson

There were no parents holding them back, no younger siblings needing to be cared for, no one telling them they were going to burn in hell, and no one telling them they had an illness. There were no limits, no responsibilities, no religion, and no misunderstandings. In that moment, there was just the music vibrating through their bodies. The worst part was knowing the music and the moment would eventually end. — Chris Colfer

I'd always rather err on the side of openness. But there's a difference between optimum and maximum openness, and fixing that boundary is a judgment call. The art of leadership is knowing how much information you're going to pass on - to keep people motivated and to be as honest, as upfront, as you can. But, boy, there really are limits to that. — Warren G. Bennis

That stab in the heart she felt when she woke, and the panicky doubt that her life was in her grasp, not fraud or failure, not entirely - that was a brief misery and one she could set aside by putting the light on and reading for a while. She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, because she knew there were limits to her experience that precluded her knowing what there was to be wished. — Marilynne Robinson

Here I am," I said, all impertinence. "I'm watching the time." Knowing my mother's voice as well as I did, I could already hear her say, "Oh, you are a bold piece." Knowing the limits of my mother's patience, I could already feel the slap on my cheek. But my mother merely stood beside me with her hands on her hips, studying her stubborn daughter once more, even as that daughter kept her exaggerated, myopic stare on the clock. "I suppose this is how it's going to be," she said softly, more to herself than to me. "You're growing up." And then, for a moment, she put a gentle hand to my head. She said, "God help us both," and left the kitchen. — Alice McDermott

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists. — Immanuel Kant

Parkour is really a practice of getting to know yourself, what you're able to do, what are your limits. As you train, you start knowing what you can do. — David Belle

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is. — Blaise Pascal

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature, necessity, and can believe nothing else.
If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him. — Blaise Pascal

Our minds are finite and far from noble. Knowing their limits can help us to become better reasoners. — Gary Marcus

Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits. — David W. Earle

Nothing limits you like not knowing your limitations. — Tom Hayes

I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by [supernatural] follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the distinction of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to measure these things by our capacity and competence. If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually before our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness. — Michel De Montaigne

But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a realistic assessment of the job to be done and one's ability to do it, then you might say the chief virtue of excellent artists is their modesty ... But knowing your limits and going to them isn't arrogance. It's greatness of spirit. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There is wisdom in knowing your limits and then daring to push past them. Choose to live an exceptional life. — Truth Devour

We know the existence of the infinite without knowing its nature, because it too has extension but unlike us no limits.
But we do not know either the existence or the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits. — Blaise Pascal

We should credit [the sky] for what it is: for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature.

It breathes for us, and it does another thing for our pleasure. Each day, millions of meteorites fall against the outer limits of the membrane and are burned to nothing by the friction. Without this shelter, our surface would long since have become the pounded powder of the moon. Even though our receptors are not sensitive enough to hear it, there is comfort in knowing that the sound is there overhead, like the random noise of rain on the roof at night. — Lewis Thomas

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. — Mortimer J. Adler

Prayer is knowing that what I ask for is always far bigger than what I could ever articulate, but it is never too big for God to understand nor is it ever too vast for Him to deliver. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be "like God, knowing good and evil." He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess. — Russell D. Moore

Her goodness had limits. She could have easily gone her whole life without knowing those limits, but now she knew exactly where they lay. — Liane Moriarty

Knowing your limits is a strength, not a weakness. — Kim Harrison

When I walk off the field exhausted, drenched in sweat, knowing I pushed myself to the physical, mental, and emotional limits, there is no better feeling. — Joanna Lohman

Knowing your limits, and that there is a limit to getting what you want, comes from a sense of self-respect instilled in you from an early age. It takes guts to stand up in the face of what you really want, but you have to know in your heart that if you make the wrong choice you won't be able to live with yourself for the rest of your life. There is only one person who matters at that point and that's YOU. If you give in to such pressures, you strip away your self-respect, your personal ethics and your standards - the very things that create the fiber that will hold you together for the rest of your life. — Goldie Hawn