Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

While memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records.

’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.” ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black.

He reads much; He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men.

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.

It oft falls out, To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

We feel that we are greater than we know.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will.

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Much Madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Much Sense—the starkest Madness— ’Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail— Assent—and you are sane— Demur—you’re straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain.

Except Thyself may be Thine Enemy— Captivity is Consciousness— So’s Liberty.

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

A fool’s paradise is a wise man’s hell!

To thine ownself be true.

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Be vigilant; guard your mind against negative thoughts.

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

Change your thoughts and you Change your world.