Richard Matheson Quotes

Self knowledge is always bad news.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

No one seemed able to look at themselves, coolly, from the outside. Their reality was all that could be seen in the light cast ahead by their own wishful thinking.

We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.

Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the “I,” with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.

Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

Nothing is the mirror in which you see the world.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.

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.

Every decision you make ... is a decision about Who You Are.

Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.

What your glasse telles you, will not be told by Councell.

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

We may listen to our inner self-and still not know which ocean we hear roaring.

Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.

The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God as something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way.

Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.