The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, 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.
—Pierre Charron (1541–1603) French Preacher, Philosopher
The height of all philosophy is to know thyself; and the end of this knowledge is to know God. Know thyself, that thou mayest know God; and know God, that thou mayest love him and be like him. In the one thou art initiated into wisdom; and in the other perfected in it.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
To reach perfection, we must be made sensible of our failings, either by the admonitions of friends, or the invectives of enemies.
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
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.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
Our lives teach us who we are.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
No man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one, who mistook them.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
—Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) English Poet
Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The highest and most profitable learning is the knowledge of ourselves. To have a low opinion of our own merits, and to think highly of others, is an evidence of wisdom. All men are frail, but thou shouldst reckon none so frail as thyself.
—Thomas a Kempis (1379–1471) German Religious Priest, Writer
Know thyself, was counted one of the oracles of the Greeks. It was inscribed as one of their three great precepts, in letters of gold, on the temple at Delphos, and regarded as divine.
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
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.
—Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327) German Christian Mystic
Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.
—Spanish Proverb
Know thyself.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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.
—M. C. Richards (1916–99) American Poet, Potter, Writer
I know myself, but that is all.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
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.
—Abraham Maslow (1908–70) American Psychologist, Academic, Humanist
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
—Boethius (c.480–524 CE) Roman Statesman, Philosopher
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Greatness knows itself.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Know yourself, master yourself, conquest of self is most gratifying.
—Unknown
The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.
—F. H. Bradley (1846–1924 ) British Idealist Philosopher
Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but action.—Strive to do your duty, and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Man, know thyself; all wisdom centres there.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Ninety per cent of the world’s woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves—so how can we know anyone else?
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–86) American Essayist, Drama Critic
Man can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as… from a lack of bread.
—Richard Wright (1908–1960) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.
—Thomas a Kempis (1379–1471) German Religious Priest, Writer
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
—Zhuang Zhou (c.369–c.286 BCE) Chinese Taoist Philosopher
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