Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

With what you don't know about me, I could just about fill the Grand Canyon.

The difficulty in life is the choice.

 

I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.

Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?

Existence precedes and rules essence.

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

This intimate alliance—which for me makes the true man—of pessimism of the intelligence, which penetrates every illusion, and optimism of the will.

That inescapable animal walks with me. Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.

We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.

It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

When he was reading, he drew his eyes along over the leaves, and his heart searched into the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.

Some thirty inches from my nose

My mistakes are my life.

He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead.