Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all of the motives which produced them.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

This feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

The truth about a man is, first of all, what it is that he keeps hidden.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings, and all beings in his own self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.