143 Inspiring Self-Awareness Quotes

In today's fast-paced world, finding moments of introspection and self-discovery can be challenging yet essential. Self-awareness is the cornerstone of personal growth, enabling us to understand our thoughts, emotions, and actions at a deeper level. To inspire your journey inward, we've compiled a curated list of the top 143 self-awareness quotes. These powerful words of wisdom from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries serve as a guide, encouraging reflection and helping you to cultivate a more mindful and intentional life. Whether you're just beginning your path to self-discovery or are well-versed in the art of introspection, these quotes are sure to provide the inspiration you need to continue exploring the depths of your true self.

1. “As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.” - Oprah Winfrey

2. “At the center of your beingyou have the answer;you know who you areand you know what you want.” - Lao Tzu

3. “When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement. ” - Max Ernst

4. “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” - Ralph Ellison

5. “Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

6. “It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” - Marianne Williamson

7. “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” - Dolly Parton

8. “...I sense that stepping into the light is also a powerful metaphor for consciousness, for the birth of the knowing mind, for the simple and yet momentous coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental.” - Antonio Damasio

9. “I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood... I was raving, if only to myself.” - Robin McKinley

10. “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - C.G. Jung

11. “I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.” - Charlotte Brontë

12. “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” - Carl R. Rogers

13. “She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.” - Jane Austen

14. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” - Charlotte Brontë

15. “Through others we become ourselves.” - Lev S. Vygotsky

16. “I am who I am; no more, no less.” - Terry Goodkind

17. “I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself.” - Philip K. Dick

18. “How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.” - Joseph Campbell

19. “Don't try to tell me what I am because I know what I am not” - Dr. Amit Abraham

20. “Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.” - David Brin

21. “All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.”At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes.“The key word here is roots,” Maestra had countered. “The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, there's a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression.”“Yeah but Maestra—”“Don't interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser—a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician—can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing'll go wrong and it'll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it's playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That's why, Switters my dearest, every time you've shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I've played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse’s Mouth. And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me— you and I: excuse me—may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine.”“But what about self-esteem?”“Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace—and maybe even glory.” - Tom Robbins

22. “I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.” - W.H. Auden

23. “You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!” - John Lennon

24. “I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.” - Douglas Adams

25. “The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.” - George Sheehan

26. “There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.” - J. Michael Straczynski

27. “With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past--the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forgetfulness, and remembrance--and tosses them mockingly on the glassy table surface of our consciousness. There we are forced to consider them. There we are forced to regard, analyze, and re-understand.” - Heinrich Zimmer

28. “Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your head, saying: “One day, maybe not so long from now, you'll get to know how it feels.” So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

29. “Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.” - Fred Rogers

30. “Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself....His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness.” - Herman Hesse

31. “The Way to do is to be.” - Lao Tzu

32. “Look, there is nothing you can say about this show that I don't already know” - Craig Ferguson

33. “Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” - Marcel Proust

34. “She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.” - Sharon Maas

35. “Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.” - Hugo Hamilton

36. “If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.” - Paulo Coelho

37. “There are things you don't want to know you can do” - Robin McKinley

38. “I think that's the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential.” - Steve Toltz

39. “True joy comes from operating with Inner-directedness and recognizing who you are.” - Sanaya Roman

40. “I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.” - Thomas Merton

41. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” - Charlotte Brontë

42. “IF YOU DON'T GO AFTER WHAT YOU WANT; YOU COULD SPEND YOUR ENTIRE LIFE SETTLING FOR WHAT YOU CAN GET” - Mo Stegall

43. “History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...” - A. S. Byatt

44. “Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.” - Anthony de Mello

45. “We stay busy so we don't have to admit we don't have all the answers. After long enough with our constant distractions, we end our search for them. And God. Soon enough, we'll all come to realize we can't be God. We'll settle for telling ourselves we can. Or we'll just make one up.” - Brian Krans

46. “you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” - Ernest Hemingway

47. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” - Michel de Montaigne

48. “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.” - Pico Iyer

49. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,” - Amit Ray

50. “In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them?” - J.M. Coetzee

51. “I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before!” - C. JoyBell C.

52. “She wasn't tracking down her father to learn more about him. She was tracking him down to learn more about herself.” - Brad Meltzer

53. “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” - C.S. Lewis

54. “The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.” - C. JoyBell C.

55. “Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.” - Adam Gopnik

56. “If we cant laugh at ourselves, do we have the right to laugh at others?” - C.H. Hamel

57. “Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the shore of his Self.” - E.L. Doctorow

58. “You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

59. “The need to prove who you are will vanish once you know who you are.” - Danielle Pierre

60. “I suffer because my interactions with others do not meet the expectations I did not know I had.” - Jim McDonald

61. “The gift of willingness is the only thing that stands between the quiet desperation of a disingenuous life and the actualization of unexpressed potential.” - Jim McDonald

62. “You've always been what you are. That's not new. What you'll get used to is knowing it.” - Cassandra Clare

63. “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” - Socrates

64. “We judge others instantly by their clothes, their cars, their appearance, their race, their education, their social status. The list is endless. What gets me is that most people decide who another person is before they have even spoken to them. What's even worse is that these same people decide who someone else is, and don't even know who they are themselves.” - Ashly Lorenzana

65. “How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?” - Madeline Claire Franklin

66. “I didn't know I had it in me. There's more to all of us than we realize. Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think. We're capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.” - Queen Latifah

67. “I'd spend about an hour, my room darkening around me, wondering what the hell happened to make me so unsure of who I even was. Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world to answer, right? Only for me it hadn't been easy for a very long time.” - Jennifer Brown

68. “I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.” - Helen Fielding

69. “The world each person creates for himself is a distinctive world, not the same world others occupy.” - Dean Barnlund

70. “She had been struck by the figure of a woman's back in a mirror. She stopped and looked. The dress the figure wore was the color called ashes of roses, and Ada stood, held in place by a sharp stitch of envy or th woman's dress and the fine shape of her back and her thick dark hair and the sense of assurance she seemed to evidence in her very posture.Then Ada took a step forward, and the other woman did too, and Ada realized that it was herself she was admiring, the mirror having caught the reflection of an opposite mirror on the wall behind her. The light of the lamps and the tint of the mirrors had conspired to shift colors, bleaching mauve to rose. She climbed the steps to her room and prepared for bed, but she slept poorly that night, for the music went on until dawn. As she lay awake she thought how odd it had felt to win her own endorsement.” - Charles Frazier

71. “I'd been so fascinated by the notion, that I'd forgotten to measure what it was bringing forth. I'd been asleep, dreaming.” - Ralph Ellison

72. “Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.” - Ashly Lorenzana

73. “Just take this as a warning. Know that there's always a price for not being yourself.” - Benilde Little

74. “Being spontaneous is being able to respond with confidence; calmly trusting that, whatever the outcome, you will have a positive if challenging experience that will lead to greater self-awareness and success.” - Sylvia Clare

75. “If you were determined to get enjoyment out of every moment, you would learn to do whatever it took. What it takes is not listening to negative thoughts, yours or anyone else's. Disregarding negative thoughts isn't hiding our head in the sand, but simply not allowing the negative to clutter and influence over our experience of the present moment. The moment is never improved or helped by negativity, although we are programmed to think our negative thoughts, worries, and fears serve a useful function. When you really examine this idea, however, you see that negativity doesn't serve. Focusing on negativity and fears doesn't make anyone a better person, nor does doing that help us function better in the world. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite.” - Gina Lake

76. “A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.” - Gina Lake

77. “If I ever leave this place-I'll make sure I'm better HERE first.” - Markus Zusak

78. “Once," Fran says, settling against the worktable, folding her arms, "I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no mattter what anyone else might want for us. Wasn't that you?” - Madeleine George

79. “My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" -Socrates” - Socrates

80. “To know a species, look at its fears. To know yourself, look at your fears. Fear in itself is not important, but fear stands there and points you in the direction of things that are important. Don't be afraid of your fears, they're not there to scare you; they're there to let you know that something is worth it.” - C. JoyBell C.

81. “Who can say for certain that he is sincere, who can say for certain that he believes? In the midst of of our deepest emotions we are acting a comedy with ourselves; within us one self is always mocking another self. - priscilla and emily lofte” - George Moore

82. “By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.” - Lev Grossman

83. “Life is a valuable and unique opportunityto discover who you are.But it seems as soon as you nearanswering that age-old question,something unexpected always happensto alter your course.And who it is you thought you weresuddenly changes.Then comes the frustrating realizationthat no matter how long life endures,no matter how many experiencesare muddled through in this existence,you may never really be ableto answer the question....Who am I? Because the answer, like the seasons,constantly, subtly, inevitably changes.And who it is you are today,is not the same person you will be tomorrow.” - Richelle Goodrich

84. “No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.""I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you."She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling."And I ask in what sense that young man is worthy of me?” - Charlotte Brontë

85. “When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.” - Jess C. Scott

86. “She was looking for something I could never give her." Again his dark eyes bored into Julia's mind. "You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don't think you will find it in another person. You won't. It's not there. You must find it in yourself.” - Iain Pears

87. “self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

88. “التفكير هو الذي جعل الإنسان يتطور. فالإنسان تطور عندما أدرك ما الذي حوله. عندما فهم. وحلل. وربط واكتشف. وأول ما اكتشف: ذاته..” - أنيس منصور

89. “Though you might conquer in battle A thousand times a thousand men,You're the greatest battle-winner If you conquer just one - yourself.” - Anonymous

90. “There's a mess inside you: You clean the outside.” - Anonymous

91. “I should learn from today and make tomorrow better.” - Toni Sorenson

92. “I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in the regard to all the for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as I’ve told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferiority–like tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partner–it was hard for me not to think that, with a little time and practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree.” - Albert Camus

93. “The testimony of the greatest humans who have ever lived is that the way to make the most of ourselves is by transcending ourselves. We must learn to move beyond self-centeredness to make room within ourselves for others. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be confirmed by the quality of your life. We will attain – even if only momentarily – a transparency and a radiance of being which results from living both within and beyond yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding.” - Don Richard Riso

94. “I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.” - C. JoyBell C.

95. “The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.” - Jim Morrison

96. “Before you can be effective in communication with ANYONE else, you must know who YOU are. It begins with you. Believe me when I say, I don't need anyone's approval in this classroom ... I'm great company for myself. Me, myself, and I ... we laugh a lot. (Said on the first week of class each phase, somewhat rewording each time, but the gist is always there).” - Dacia Wilkinson

97. “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” - Andre Malraux

98. “Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.” - John Taylor Gatto

99. “Our parents can show us a lot of things: they can show us how we are to be and what things we ought to strive for, or they can show us how not to be and what things we ought to stray from, then you may have the kind of parents that show you all the things about you that you want to get rid of and you realize those traits aren't yours at all but are merely your parents' marks that have rubbed off onto you.” - C. JoyBell C.

100. “If you swim effortlessly in the deep oceans, ride the waves to and from the shore, if you can breathe under water and dine on the deep treasures of the seas; mark my words, those who dwell on the rocks carrying nets will try to reel you into their catch. The last thing they want is for you to thrive in your habitat because they stand in their atmosphere where they beg and gasp for some air.” - C. JoyBell C.

101. “Ogni uomo ha le sue bestie che se ne stanno in agguato al buio, e le sue maschere per nasconderle. E scatenarle fuori di sé nel mondo non è una via per liberarsene. Quindi sì, vivrò ancora con loro, per tutto il tempo che mi resta da vivere. Ma, se potrò impedirlo, non saranno più loro a guidarmi la mano.” - Luca Tarenzi

102. “There is no adversity that cannot bear a gift and no gift that cannot bring adversity.” - Mollie Marti

103. “With every choice you create the life you’ll live; with every decision you design it.” - Mollie Marti

104. “Fue adondo a mi me perdieronquw logre por fin encontrarme?Was it where they lost methat I finally found myself?” - Pablo Neruda

105. “It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

106. “You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.” - Anthon St. Maarten

107. “You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.” - Julien Smith

108. “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” - Marcus Aurelius

109. “The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can’t get out of within.” - Arthur Miller

110. “A real secret is something which only one person knows.” - Idries Shah

111. “It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within - that you can begin to take control.” - Oprah Winfrey

112. “The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?” - Vernor Vinge

113. “I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.” - Tahar Ben Jelloun

114. “What people say and feel about you when you've left a room is precisely your job while you are in it.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

115. “One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, / And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten / million years, / I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.” - Walt Whitman

116. “I am.I'm here.I'm me.You are the mystery. ” - Richelle E. Goodrich

117. “One makes discoveries about oneself but more often one makes up discoveries.” - Sara Levine

118. “Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process.” - Michele Rosenthal

119. “The power we discover inside ourselves as we survive a life-threatening experience can be utilized equally well outside of crisis, too. I am, in every moment, capable of mustering the strength to survive again—or of tapping that strength in other good, productive, healthy ways.” - Michele Rosenthal

120. “Was this new self awareness a gift or a curse?” - D. Morgenstern

121. “Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,As souls only understand souls.” - Walt Whitman

122. “Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.” - Don DeLillo

123. “You must learn to control your dreams or your dreams will forever control you.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

124. “A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.” - James Allen

125. “Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.” - Michael A. Singer

126. “What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you’d have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night—you had no idea what you would get.” - Erica Bauermeister

127. “Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn

128. “...to know an other's interior life you are his confessor or a writer - the one is admitted freely, the other intrudes by discerning of spirits ” - John Geddes

129. “If you love yourself the most at your happiest moments, there is no reason not to be fond of who you are in the dark.” - Ashly Lorenzana

130. “Peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with the contents of your mind.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

131. “Some of the things that beat the shit out of you . . . can beat the bullshit out of you too.” - Henry V. O'Neil

132. “Tener opiniones es estar vendido a uno mismo. No tener opiniones es existir. Tener todas las opiniones es ser poeta.” - Fernando Pessoa

133. “I love, because my love is not dependent on the object of love. My love is dependent on my state of being. So whether the other person changes, becomes different, friend turns into a foe, does not matter, because my love was never dependent on the other person. My love is my state of being. I simply love.” - Osho

134. “When you can truly understand how others experience your behavior, without defending or judging, you then have the ability to produce a breakthrough in your leadership and team. Everything starts with your self-awareness. You cannot take charge without taking accountability, and you cannot take accountability without understanding how you avoid it.” - Loretta Malandro

135. “It sounds like a lot when you summarize it, but I don't do all of it every day. If you want to know the truth, most days I feel like I'm miserably behind and only doing about half of what I should be doing. But when you look back you can see that you're building something. I think people who say 'Don't look back' are crazy. I wouldn't survive if I weren't looking back and patting myself on the back all the time for making it this far.” - Charity Shumway

136. “When you assess your own life, consider it with the eye of a gardener. Underneath the surface lies rich, fertile soil waiting to nurture the seeds you sow. Even more than you can imagine will grow there if given a chance.” - Steve Goodier

137. “Your heart is who you are, all else follows. Guard your heart, Thomas. Guard your heart.” - Liam Perrin

138. “There are a lot of black-hearted, mean-spirited bastards in the world. It's important that we hold them to acount. But always remember that you might be the most black-hearted and mean-spirited in the lot, so hold yourself the most accountable of all.” - Darren Shan

139. “When we do not know our true identity as powerful creators, we are susceptible to being used and manipulated.” - Bryant McGill

140. “Separate yourself from the lies and illusions which are not you.” - Bryant McGill

141. “One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.” - Rollo May

142. “...and the smoke that creeps off the tip of my cigarette and into the dim, scattered strands of light leaking off the moon, in through the clefts in the curtains, is much like my spirit trying to escape the burn of yesterday's presence.” - Kellie Elmore

143. “It...whatever 'it' is, has swallowed me and I lie here in the pit of its cold dark stomach being eaten alive by its bile and I...I don't even know if I want to be saved.” - Kellie Elmore