Know Oneself Quotes

“We need not be afraid of learning to know ourselves, fearing it would come down to disappointment. Remaining humble allows us to have compassion for ourselves for not being perfect. If we stay lucid and grounded, we steer clear of the steep cliffs of delusional self-importance or arrogance.( "I am on my own side, but I can listen" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The natural solution to learning to live together in a community is first to learn to live apart as individuals and as families. Only when you feel good about yourself can you feel good about others.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“I had often toyed with pictures of the future, dreamed of rôles which might be assigned to me—as a poet, maybe, or prophet or painter or kindred vocation. All that was futile. I was not there to write poetry, to preach or paint; neither I nor any other man was there for that purpose. They were only incidental things. There was only one true vocation for everybody—to find the way to himself. He might end as poet, lunatic, prophet or criminal—that was not his affair; ultimately it was of no account. His affair was to discover his own destiny, not something of his own choosing, and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.”
― Hermann Hesse

“There is no generosity, true acts of goodness, or love without clear-sightedness. I began writing searching for wisdom, questioning from whence it comes. I now repent in dust and ashes. Age-old anxiety weighed heavily on my weakened soul. Sadness and bitter awareness of the futility of living an immoral life forced rigorous self-examination, renunciation of artificial goals and idols. I sought to eradicate a ludicrous egotistic self. I am filled with inscrutable yearning to live a heighted quality of existence that the superior men in history attained by recognizing that their former life was an illusion. In the dead of night, when we speak truths that elude airing in daylight, I torched the castle that housed my solipsistic being that sought fulfillment of its selfish needs. In the second half of existence, I hope to drop attachments, the destructive desires of wanting, and begin a journey seeking intellectual fulfillment of an artistic being. I wish to live in perfect harmony by organizing all that life proffers and conducting personal affairs in a coordinated manner, which the inherent chaos of the world cannot disturb.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The injunction to know oneself can be found in many traditions, including the Western philosophical tradition that goes back to Socrates. According to Zen, however, to truly discover what the self is, we need a more direct path than mere intellectual reasoning.”
― Bret W Davis, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism

“Life is all about knowing the truth of oneself as the divine and living in the realization of one's true self.”
― Shiva Negi