Self Knowledge Quotes - Page 12

• I know unless I'm true to myself I couldn't be happy. Too much emphasis is placed today on externals and too little on character.

  Betty White

  Character, Littles, Today

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• We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first in his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it on trifles.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Self, Long, Effort

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• Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.

  Blaise Pascal

  Running, Ignorance, Knowledge

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• We are the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then.

  Agatha Christie

  Years, People, Twenties

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

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Love, Know Yourself, Hated

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• The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge.

  Bruce Lee

  Art, Lying, Mean

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• Self knowledge is always bad news.

  John Barth

  Self, News, Bad News

  John Barth (2014). “Giles Goat Boy”, p.170, Anchor

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• It matters, it matters very much, what each of us chooses to do. The journey toward self-discovery and self-knowledge is not only life's highest adventure, but also the only way to transform society from one based on self-centeredness and compulsory compassion to one based on service and mutual responsibility.

  Arianna Huffington

  Adventure, Responsibility, Journey

  Arianna Huffington (2003). “Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• Poor Oscar. Without even realizing it he'd fallen into one of those Let's Be Friends Vortexes, the bane of nerdboys everywhere. These relationships were love's version of a stay in the stocks, in you go, plenty of misery guaranteed and what you got out of it besides bitterness and heartbreak nobody knows. Perhaps some knowledge of self and women.

  Junot Diaz

  Self, Vortex, Oscars

  Junot Diaz (2008). “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, p.41, Faber & Faber

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• When time and space and change converge, we find place. We arrive in Place when we resolve things. Place is peace of mind and understanding. Place is knowledge of self. Place is resolution.

  Abdullah Ibrahim

  Self, Space, Understanding

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• In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

  Jane Smiley

  Doctors, Self, Talking

  "Our lady of east LA" by Jane Smiley, www.theguardian.com. April 21, 2007.

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• On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.

  Hu Shih

  Historical Knowledge, Self, Achievement

  Hu Shih (2013). “English Writings of Hu Shih: Literature and Society”, p.99, Springer Science & Business Media

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• If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.

  Jean Paul

  Self, Virtue, Stills

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• I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times... Man is a dialogue between nature and God. On other planets this dialogue will doubtless be of a higher and profounder character. What is lacking is Self-Knowledge. After that the rest will follow.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, Men, Self

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• Science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.

  James Jeans

  Knowledge, Science, Jeans

  Sir James Hopwood Jeans (2017). “The Mysterious Universe [New Revised Edition]”, p.126, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Careful studies of cases dealing with supposed 'mental disorder' have at times revealed that many thought to be insane or warped in some fashion were actually simply highly sensitive individuals. What they suffered from was not mental debilitation, but personal and communal ignorance of psychic reality.

  Aberjhani

  Fashion, Ignorance, Knowledge

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• Yet while nature is in constant flux, we always go against the grain and try to freeze our ideas and experiences and make them absolute. It is egotism that makes us identify with one opinion rather than another, become quarrelsome and unkind, say *this* could not mean *that*, and think we have a duty to change others to suit ourselves.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Knowledge, Thinking

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• There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows; I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee, Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss: Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility, And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner: Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly, And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Sweet, Regret, Grief

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1849). “Tupper's Poetical Works: Proverbial Philosophy, A Thousand Lines, Hactenus”, p.14

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• A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Educational, Philosophy

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• Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price.

  Janet Morris

  Knowledge, Commitment, Long

  Janet Morris (2011). “Tempus with His Right-Side Companion Niko”, p.6, Paradise Publishing

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• The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Mom, Daughter

  Phyllis McGinley (1951). “A Short Walk from the Station”

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• No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery - the source of truth.

  Barry Long

  Motivational, Education, Men

  "Knowing Yourself: The True in the False". Book by Barry Long, 1996.

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• Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Knowledge, Men, Difficult

  "De Oratore (On the Orator)". Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero (Book III, Chapter 9), 55 BC.

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• If I could know me, I could know the universe.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Know Me, Knows, If I Could

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• This precept descended from Heaven: know thyself.

  Juvenal

  Knowledge, Heaven, Know Thyself

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 419-23, Satires, XI, line 27, 1922.

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