Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

It is thy very energy of thought Which keeps thee from thy God.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw.

And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks.

You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind, The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind. And everyone will say, As you walk your mystic way, “If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the atomic age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still voice of conscience.

To us he is no more a person Now but a whole climate of opinion.

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

It is an ancient Mariner,

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Just trust yourself and you’ll learn the art of living.

All our knowledge is, ourselves to know.

Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.

Behold! human beings living in a underground den … Like ourselves … they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

We must ask where we are and whither we are tending.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are rearranging their prejudices.

I deny nothing, but doubt everything.