Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.

No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.

You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

I like the scientific spirit – the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them.

WHAT EXACTLY DO I THINK ABOUT WHEN I’M RUNNING? I DON’T HAVE A CLUE.

FASHION IS WHAT YOU ADOPT WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

IF A WOMAN DOUBTS AS TO WHETHER SHE SHOULD ACCEPT A MAN OR NOT, SHE CERTAINLY OUGHT TO REFUSE HIM.

GOOD AND BAD MEN ARE EACH LESS SO THAN THEY SEEM.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

EACH FRIEND REPRESENTS A WORLD IN US, A WORLD POSSIBLY NOT BORN UNTIL THEY ARRIVE.

NO MAN KNOWS HE IS YOUNG WHILE HE IS YOUNG.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ENEMY OF ALL ART, BE IT ACTING, WRITING, PAINTING, OR LIVING ITSELF, WHICH IS THE GREATEST ART OF ALL.

I LOVE SHERLOCK HOLMES. MY LIFE IS SO UNTIDY AND HE’S SO NEAT.

A GOOD NOVEL TELLS US THE TRUTH ABOUT ITS HERO; BUT A BAD NOVEL TELLS US THE TRUTH ABOUT ITS AUTHOR.

We are all born originals. Why is it so many of us die copies?

To thine ownself be true.