Quotes & Sayings About Knowing Yourself

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down. — J.C. Ryle

Knowing the same tricks a con man knows is the best way to protect yourself from him. -Naru — Shiho Inada

Knowing yourself and coming to trust your feelings and your intuition will open up your life to greater possibilities and keep you moving toward your goals. One thing I have learned is that I should trust my 'gut' instincts. Ultimately, only we know what is best for us. — Miranda Kerr

The thing about knowing you're broken is that knowing is not enough to fix it. — John Goode

The primary success factor is knowing how to learn from others and rely on yourself. — Denis Waitley

Knowing yourself, knowing where you want to get, combining those things gives you the pragmatic steps. — John Amaechi

Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion. — Eckhart Tolle

Embodiment begins with knowing yourself - who you are, what cultures you belong to, and what you want to create in the world. — Bruce Nussbaum

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

Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work. — Lionel Shriver

There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars. Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home - those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don't need to conquer it; it is already conquered. By knowing yourself you have conquered it. — Osho

Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion. Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want. There is no security in freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of security. This is, of course, why it is so free: there's nothing there to grab hold of. — Adyashanti

If you can sit here and talk to a person you don't know very well, and talk about all these things you've been through - that's something. That's courage. It's knowing yourself. — Hector Tobar

Though it may be called a nescience, and unknowing, yet there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it; for this unknowing lures and attracts you from all understood things, and from yourself as well. — Meister Eckhart

Feelings have their own special names. The more names you know, the more you can understand your feelings and tell other people about them. And the more you can stick up for yourself. Names are like handles for our feelings. Knowing — Gershen Kaufman

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea? — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

You have to have a view of something," she said. "Otherwise you'll believe yourself to be a god, not knowing there are a million other things out there bigger than you. — Darnell Lamont Walker

The Spirit which is within you is a collective being and once you are awakened into the light of Spirit, you become a collective being. That means, on your finger tips you can feel the centers of others also as you can feel yourself. By knowing yourself you know the self knowledge, the inner self knowledge and by knowing others you are in collective consciousness. — Nirmala Srivastava

Knowing yourself is life's eternal homework — Felicia Day

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet. — John D. MacDonald

When things start to get rough, you find comfort in your faith. Knowing that no matter what, you can dust yourself off and be okay. — Marcus Mariota

True maturity is in attitude and a true attitude is maturity. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Find comfort in questioning yourself. — Bryant McGill

Boom and there it is. I told you, didn't I fuckin' tell you, our baby bro's in love, finally, finally Gabe, welcome to the world of never knowing if you're saying the right thing, accepting you're wrong when you know you're right, taking the blame when you didn't do anything and generally losing any dignity and respect you may once of had for yourself, just to make her happy. — Lesley Jones

Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential. — Warren G. Bennis

The song is about knowing the end result of every situation you're in, and being able to play it out in your mind and see it before it happens. It's about addiction, really, about knowing how it's all going to end up. In that sense, you're watching a movie of yourself all the time - and then you want out of that movie. — Rufus Wainwright

Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for. — Paula Stokes

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: Yourself. — Alan Alda

Sometimes you have to walk out on a limb, knowing you could fall thirty feet to the hard ground, just to see if that apple on the edge is worth the risk like you think it is."
"And what if it's not?"
"Then you get up, dust yourself off, and keep walking til you find the next tree. — Kandi Steiner

I'm a fan of Tom's of Maine natural oral care line for those very reasons; they deliver on both healthy and environmental goodness. The beauty of it is you'll feel even more empowered knowing you're doing something good for yourself and the environmental footprint of your beauty routine. — Sophie Heyman Uliano

Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened - at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. — Maggie Stiefvater

[I]t is through knowing who you are not that the greatest obstacle to truly knowing yourself is removed. — Eckhart Tolle

Someone has said of books that they are our 'amplest heritages' of thought, and so they are. That doesn't necessarily mean that they must be learned or profound. They are food for the mind and different minds require different foods ; everyone is better for variety. Whatever stimulates the mind feeds it, be it fact, fiction or fable. That is where our responsibility lies ; in knowing what builds good mental blood and brawn, and in dispensing that only. Don't ever let yourself think you haven't time to read. — Mary Virginia Provines

Be aware of yourself and know yourself. No matter how much you have learned and how much you know, if you don't know yourself you don't know anything. — Suzuki Shosan

Beauty shouldn't be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It's about knowing that someone else's definition of pretty has no hold over you. — Golda Poretsky

True sorrows do not pass like clouds or inclement weather ... Sorrows are absorbed over time, and you reshape yourself around them. How you absorb them makes you what you are for good or ill. I think the only true and right way is to take our sorrows into us bravely and wholly, knowing they will hurt, and accepting that sometimes pain is unavoidable. It is when grief is suppressed or hidden that it does harm — Isobelle Carmody

An amazing thing happens when you stop seeking approval and validation: You find it. People are naturally drawn like magnets to those who know who they are and cannot be shaken! — Mandy Hale

Don't ever give up. Believe in yourself or no one else will. My personal saying is: 'I'd rather die knowing that I tried to do what I love.' — Adrienne Bailon

Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures. Compete with yourself, not with others. Judge yourself on what is your personal best and you'll accomplish more than you could ever have imagined. Life stops for no one, so keep moving. Stay awake and stay alive. There's no AutoCorrect in life - think before texting the universe. Breaking the rules just for fun is too easy - the real challenge lies in perfecting the art of knowing which rules to accept and which to rewrite. The more you experiment, take risks, and make mistakes, the better you'll know yourself, the better you'll know the world, and the more focused you'll be. — Sophia Amoruso

Study the rules so that you won't beat yourself by not knowing something. — Babe Didrikson Zaharias

It's the same with people knowing absolutely everything there is to know about an actor. I actually think the more personal information you have about an actor, the more you have to carve out for yourself when you go to a movie and see them in it. — Holly Hunter

You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without you knowing it. Of course that's because you're new to the town, and you give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen."
"I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care where I follow so long as I follow you. — Booth Tarkington

He was starting to think that consciousness wasn't some lighthouse of self-knowing but merely a little cave where you made up stories about yourself, whatever it took to hide the shit and the slime, the utter mollusk you were in your deepest nature. He wondered what was down there, under the shit, what kind of bedrock he might strike. Take — Nino Ricci

It's about somebody initially knowing more about it than you do but eventually you learn a lot about it yourself and practise the skills and techniques that you've been taught. — Lynn Davies

Oh! Speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself device. — Leonardo Da Vinci

You can't sit down and write 300 compositions in a three-month period and think that you're doing it all by yourself. Obviously, there's something going on here. And whether you want to call it channeling or being connected to a creative force or knowing your history and knowing where you belong, that's, you know, maybe a personal thing. — John Zorn

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea ... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self - beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are. — Eckhart Tolle

Knowing that you are perfect as you are does not mean you will no longer grow. It means that everything you've experienced up to this moment has made you who you are, and that is perfection. Tomorrow, you will be an even more perfect version of yourself. — Julie-Anne

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out. — Warren G. Bennis

To observe is not to not feel - in fact, it is to put yourself at the mercy of feeling, like the child's warm skin meeting the cold air of midnight. My own children, too, have been roused from the unconsciousness of childhood; theirs too is the pain and the gift of awareness. 'I have two homes,' my daughter said to me one evening, clearly and carefully, 'and I have no home.' To suffer and to know what it is that you suffer: how can that be measured against its much-prized opposite, the ability to be happy without knowing why? — Rachel Cusk

Knowing that you have a soul bright and clear like the sun, perceiving and feeling that soul, you will realize that it is very precious and beautiful. When
you consider yourself important and precious, you will begin to feel the same way toward other forms of life and toward the world. — Ilchi Lee

How are you in the profession of protecting people without knowing who I am? I've been told I have one of the most recognizable faces in the world. (Aiden)
Wow ... just out of curiosity, when you go to bed at night, do you find yourself ousted off the mattress by that ego? (Leta) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You know better than to blame yourself." "Knowing better doesn't always stop it. — J.D. Robb

I'm with you because you're smart and beautiful, and you are not like anyone I know. No matter how hard things are, you throw yourself into them. During Midnight Games you walked into a cage with trained killers not knowing if your curses would work, because you knew other people were counting on you. That's what you do. You step up. — Nalini Singh

There is something more dangerous than the death of one's body. It is "the undiscovered self"; being alive without knowing why. — Israelmore Ayivor

Wherever she sought solitude, she was never alone. Suddenly that wasn't a bad thing. There was safety in numbers greater than one and sanity in knowing that everyone healed. If everyone has scars, there are two choices. Bleed to death slowly or stitch yourself together. — Nicki Salcedo

For many people, loneliness was an experience of time. 'Not knowing what to do with yourself' was the way it was usually put. — Louise Bernikow

I've always thrown myself into different kinds of experiences, sometimes into really bad things. But, you grow up. You become more of a woman and you know yourself. I think knowing yourself is a wonderful thing especially when you're in your 40s and you're kind of in your skin. Life is not so confusing anymore. — Lisa Edelstein

Before you ever get the person you really want in your life, you will be tested with every person that was wrong for you. You will be tempted with what was easy, what was familiar, what was only physical, what was safe and what was simply a friend to pull you out of a difficult situation because you didn't want to be alone. When you finally meet the person you were meant to be with you won't have to guess, decide or choose. You will be drawn to them. They will seem to fit who you are, but at the same time have the missing pieces that makes you want to become a better person. There is no need to be guarded because this soul is like your own and talking to them about the deepest things in life are effortless. They won't be like any other you have met and you will find yourself looking for parts of them in everyone you meet. — Shannon L. Alder

There is always a reason. Not being willing to say what your reasons are is not the same as not knowing them. Truth is always present. Truth is always available. You simply need the courage to face yourself, explore your motives and confront your insecurities. Until then, you will only enjoy a false security in the thought that your darkness is a mystery to others. Your darkness is mystery to no one. We all have darkness, but not all of us have light. — LaShawnda Jones

I beg to differ on Charles Bukowski, who says nothing can save you, except writing. Sometimes, absolutely nothing will save you, not the nights you end up wasting waiting for something grand to happen, not the mornings where coffee has no taste and you wake up knowing the day will not be a blast, not the plans and schemes you write down on your imaginary flipchart to make the world go round. You end up stuck, alone and in the disparate points of chaos that drag you down, you have to come up with something to save yourself. Then you make six impossible wishes before breakfast, start walking and working and learn to seize what you call paranormal activity when it comes true. — Ioana-Cristina Casapu

When a small group of people come together to relive the Salem witch hunts, God cries. For if anything is sorrowful to God, it is evil done in his name. When you find out you were not given the truth, how will you live with yourself? — Shannon L. Alder

When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself
that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83) — Geneen Roth

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don't know yourself? — Francesco Petrarca

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. — Aristotle.

People talk about discipline, but to me, there's discipline and there's self-discipline. Discipline is listening to people tell you what to do, where to be, and how to do something. Self-discipline is knowing that you are responsible for everything that happens in your life; you are the only one who can take yourself to the desired heights. — Mike Shanahan

You must realize first of all that you are the proof of everything, including yourself. None can prove your existence, because his existence must be confirmed by you first. Your being and knowing you owe nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own. You do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere. You are timeless being and awareness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less. — Piet Hein

A body can't prosper if a person don't know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That's worse than being anything in the world on the outside. — James McBride

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position. — Gary Oldman

Love means leaving yourself vulnerable, knowing that there is someone to catch you when you fall. ~ Mercy — Patricia Briggs

The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you — Anthony Robbins

Unless you have a huge ego, I think it requires a tremendous amount of bravery to keep putting yourself out there, knowing that you will get rejected most of the time. — Kit Williamson

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

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

You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up. — Marie Osmond

The unknown is exciting. Not knowing what you really want to do is an adventure. It's a chance to go out there and find out what you want, to learn about yourself. Not everyone has it figured out, you know. — R.K. Ryals

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

People live their lives without ever knowing who they really are. — Chloe Thurlow

Is it dangerous to want so much to know someone without first knowing yourself? — Christina Lauren

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary. — Diana Gabaldon

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected.
I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid.
I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies.
I am afraid of me.
Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me.
I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here. — Emily Trunko

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

Creative Living, Defined So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? Look, I don't know what's hidden within you. I have no way of knowing such a thing. You yourself may barely know, although I suspect you've caught glimpses. I don't know your capacities, your aspirations, your longings, your secret talents. But surely something wonderful is sheltered inside you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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

It's all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it's the same with, if you've got a weight problem. It's all about ... finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you've got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can't do it. And it's also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you're mute, there's just no, you've got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there's no other way to get rid of them. — Richey Edwards

Never talk yourself out of knowing you're in love or into thinking that you are. — Julia Glass

She made the choice she thought was best for her, even though it was the wrong one. But that's what you have to remember ... she made that choice. Not you. And you can't blame yourself for not knowing what she failed to tell you." I kiss him on the forehead, then bring my eyes back to his. "You have to let it go. You can hold on to the hate and the love and even the bitterness, but you have to let go of the blame. The blame is what's tearing you down. — Colleen Hoover

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

The day you begin to accept who you are is when the journey of knowing yourself begins. That day is when validation through others becomes something of the past, and loving you and evolving into who you were made to be will begin. — Pierre Alex Jeanty

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling. — Zooey Deschanel

I think at the end of the day you can do both: make money and stay true to yourself. But a lot of young people look for that fame that some of these huge artists that they see on TV have, not knowing they can do what some of these underground artist are doing which is not selling their souls for a buck. — Rahki

Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight ... every choice ... Because that was the point, wasn't it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. Never any tears, never any apology, never any regrets ... You saved all that up in a way that could be used when needed. — Terry Pratchett

Loneliness isn't about being by yourself. That's fine, right and good, desirable in many ways. Loneliness is about finding a landing-place, or not, and knowing that, whatever you do, you can go back there. The opposite of loneliness isn't company, it's return. A place to return. — Jeanette Winterson