89 Self-Reflective Quotes

Exploring the depths of self-reflection can often lead to profound insights and personal growth. Whether you're looking for inspiration to fuel your journey of self-discovery or seeking wisdom to help navigate life's challenges, the right words can make a significant impact. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 89 self-reflective quotes that offer a blend of introspection, motivation, and thoughtful contemplation. These quotes serve as a mirror to your inner thoughts and emotions, encouraging you to pause, reflect, and perhaps even see yourself and the world around you in a new light. Dive in and let these powerful reflections guide your path to a deeper understanding of yourself.

1. “Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It *is*--is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.To be nothing in the self-effacement of humility, yet, for the sake of the task, to embody its whole weight and importance in your earing, as the one who has been called to undertake it. To give to people, works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute, and to take, simply and freely, what belongs to it by reason of its identity. Praise and blame, the winds of success and adversity, blow over such a life without leaving a trace or upsetting its balance.” - Dag Hammarskjöld

2. “A friend is a gift you give yourself.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

3. “You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” - Alan Watts

4. “One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.” - Hermann Hesse

5. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

6. “[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)” - Jess C. Scott

7. “I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.” - Stephen Dunn

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

9. “You are who you are when nobody's watching.” - Stephen Fry

10. “Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.” - Ayn Rand

11. “[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.” - Charles Taylor

12. “I feel the need to endanger myself every so often.” - Tim Daly

13. “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?” - Ayn Rand

14. “Though the 'Thou' is not an 'It', it is also not "another 'I'". He who treats a person as "another 'I'" does not really see that person but only a projected image of himself. Such a relation, despite the warmest "personal" feeling is really 'I'-'It'.” - Mauric Friedman

15. “Humans have invented all kinds of symbols to communicate not only with other humans but more importantly with ourselves.” - don Jose Ruiz

16. “Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” - Franz Kafka

17. “For a moment the radio wavered between stationsand I was so busymaking myself marvelous.” - S. Jane Sloat

18. “In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.” - Elizabeth Kostova

19. “The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.It is the one true and perfect symbol of the universe.And it is the one most accurate symbol of you.Spread your arms in an embrace, throw your head back, and prepare to receive and send coordinates of being. For, at last you know—you are the navigator, the captain, and the ship.” - Vera Nazarian

20. “I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.” - Karl Lagerfeld

21. “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” - J. Krishnamurti

22. “We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.” - J. Krishnamurti

23. “Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long... long before we know how to get there.” - Patti Callahan Henry

24. “She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.” - Kate Chopin

25. “No aacomplishments are important than self realization of self satisfaction.” - Santosh Kalwar

26. “It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.” - Joseph Conrad

27. “When I loved myself enough, I would sometimes wake in the night to music playing within me.” - Kim McMillen

28. “Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,in many words recallingname, renown, events, birthplace.All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.Let not the marble say what men do not.The essentials of the dead man's life--the trembling hope,the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--will abide forever.Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continuewhen it is the lives of others that will make that happen,as you yourself are the mirror and imageof those who did not live as long as youand others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.” - Jorge Luis Borges

29. “But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.” - Samuel Beckett

30. “I don't judge people. It blurs out the center of my attention,my focus, myself.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

31. “Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.” - Michel de Montaigne

32. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” - Ernest Hemingway

33. “There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend – a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will – but more often than not I am face-to-face with a stranger, a companion to something I recognise as myself, sure enough, but one who knows more than I do, thinks less of danger and propriety than I ever have or will, feels a cool and amused contempt for the rules and rituals by which I live, the duties I too readily accept, the compromises I too willingly allow (p. 262)” - John Burnside

34. “What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.” - Marcel Proust

35. “When you try to talk about yourself, you dont know who you are, or what your like, or what your like to other people. And the moment you do it's a formula for yourself, and then you're imitating yourself, and then nobody likes you and they dont know why.” - Carol Channing

36. “...you find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived.” - James Hillman

37. “Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.” - Tibor Fischer

38. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott

39. “I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all?” - Christina Rossetti

40. “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.” - C.S. Lewis

41. “If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.” - Emma Donoghue

42. “The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one’s own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed ‘other’. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly).” - Michael Kenny

43. “Man is originally characterized by his "search for meaning" rather than his "search for himself." The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself.” - Viktor E. Frankl

44. “Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep...slow...breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands.” - T.F. Hodge

45. “Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.” - Walt Whitman

46. “However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation -- to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our co-workers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships.” - Derrick Bell

47. “Don’t be surprised by your greatness. Be surprised that no one expected it.” - Rebecca Maizel

48. “But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.But it didn't seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.” - Philip Pullman

49. “To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn't stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one's place in the world. To say 'I am here.' To say 'I am.” - O. R. Melling

50. “Listen to your inner self, it knows you best.” - C. Elizabeth

51. “What will you do with your self? Many men and women are still in darkness, trying to figure out the meaning and purpose of life. But no matter what you try to do with your self— whether you deny it, obliterate it, annihilate it, accept it or express it—believe me, it is still alive and kicking.” - K.P. Yohannan

52. “Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.” - Criss Jami

53. “The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.” - Robert Hand

54. “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

55. “Apparently Brooklyn needn't always push itself to be something else, something conscious and anxious, something pointed toward Manhattan.... Brooklyn might sometimes also be pleased, as here on Flatbush, to be its grubby, enduring self.” - Jonathan Lethem

56. “... telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology.” - Abraham Verghese

57. “Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!” - Fernando Pessoa

58. “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.” - Brené Brown

59. “And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we really are.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

60. “You know that smell, when you put your nose up to a pine tree?" I told her I did perfectly. "No matter how long it has been, you always will. Like you are storing a part of that tree in your own body. ... Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change.” - Ramona Ausubel

61. “We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.” - Alain De Botton

62. “It doesn't matter where you've been, only where you are going.” - L.M. Fields

63. “I'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my consistencies.” - Myles Horton

64. “Owing to ignorance of the rope the rope appears to be a snake; owing to ignorance of the Self the transient state arises of the individualized, limited, phenomenal aspect of the Self.” - Guru Nanak

65. “Words are God’s gift to mend a broken soul.” - Chimnese Davids

66. “I was tired of being me.” - Rachel Ward

67. “You're a Genius all the time” - Jack Kerouac

68. “What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.” - David Malouf

69. “If I am not for myself, who will be?” - Pirke Avoth

70. “There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

71. “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?” - Oscar Wilde

72. “It's what's buried deep inside that frightens me because it's broken, like a shattered mirror.” - Jessica Sorensen

73. “...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?” - Robert Penn Warren

74. “I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.” - Laurence Olivier

75. “Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

76. “You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.” - Cheryl Strayed

77. “Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.” - Neal Shusterman

78. “...we each harbor a shadow self with shadowy motives and murky desires...” - John Geddes

79. “G. I. Gurdieff, "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"So-and-so-and-so-must-be; do-not-do-what-must-not-be. Mullah's favorite saying. p. 598” - Gurdieff

80. “Enlightenment is not about cocooning one’s self, but about integrating more fully with both your self and life.” - jay woodman

81. “We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.” - Anthony Marra

82. “Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.” - James Michener

83. “You speak as if this is a good world with a little evil in it. Rubbish. It's a hellish one where the best a man can do is put a little sanity back and look after his own.” - A.J. Hartley and David Hewson

84. “The "self," it seems today, is at the core of the nation's worldview rather than others (the common good), or God.” - Martha MacCullough

85. “Give yourself something to work toward -- constantly.” - Mary Kay Ash

86. “It’s ego – the false self – that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.” - Jed McKenna

87. “When you eliminate the Ego's intense desire to be correct, the clarity of the moment can come through. How simple is that?” - Beth Johnson

88. “The self was both its origins and its journey.” - Salman Rushdie

89. “I value my ownindependence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than thatof having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturingme, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He mightbe the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel andresent his interference...” - Elizabeth Gaskell