self-reflection quotes

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

Never take anything for granted.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

When I see myself as an old woman, I just think about being happy. And hopefully, I’ll still be fly.

I let the American people down.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.