Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

Remember, we learn nothing by speaking.

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

While you are alone you are entirely your own master and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behavior.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.

Be a mirror, absorb everything around you and still remain the same.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

I know all except myself. 5

What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.

When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg’d with me useless.

A man so various that he seem’d to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; Was everything by starts, and nothing long: But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

I am the Spirit that always denies! 11

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild: Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

The longest journey Is the journey inwards Of him who has chosen his destiny.

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.