Quotes to inspire and reflect

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.

We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

Now I know the things I know, / And do the things I do; / And if you do not like me so, / To hell, my love, with you!

I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing.

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.

A wise man never loses anything if he have himself.

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you by those

Who / cannot resolve upon a moment’s notice / To live his own life, he forever lives / A slave to others.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

When I speak to you about myself, I am speaking to you about yourself. How is it you don’t see that?

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than without.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

His Cheek is his Biographer—/ As long as he can blush.

It is not love we should have painted as blind, but self-love.

Self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind; it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

One must learn to love oneself ... with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.

We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows.

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.

We prefer ourselves to others, only because w^e have a more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person’s.

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.

Go to your bosom; / Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain?

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.

Knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer.

It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

Let a man once see himself as others see him, and all enthusiasm vanishes from his heart.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too..

Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one’s eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

There is no purifier like knowledge in this world: / time makes man find himself in his heart.

It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.

Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself.

i have noticed / that when / chickens quit / quarreling over their / food they often / find that there is / enough for all of them / i wonder if / it might not / be the same way / with the / human race.

The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.

It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and be filled with eagerness to live.

A sick man that gets talking about himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop.

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

What, will the world be quite overturned when you die?