Theophile Gautier Quotes

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

What are your thoughts?' 'My thoughts?' I replied, before I even realized what I was saying. 'My thoughts created my world.' Mac sat up in his seat. He scrunched his curls with his hands, perplexed. 'Who said that?' I told him the truth. 'Oh, just someone I used to know,' I said, stroking the naked skin on my middle finger.

To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you.

If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

The very act of questioning whether you exist proves you do, because you must be there for the doubt to be entertained in the first place.

How do you know, right now, that you are aware of being aware, or conscious?

The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.

I want to see, that's all. This is my life. I want to see.

On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self.

Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.

Life is but thought.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

The most important tool of my trade was a mirror.

I definitely am more observational of the people around me and how they interact and less introspective about myself.

I stay close to my identity - that's something I find important - but I don't completely shut myself off from the outside world.

My identity will always inform my experience and shape my perception. But I am an unremarkable person.

I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.

Everywhere I go, I hear 'Welcome back.' But everywhere I have been, I have always been with myself. I'm with myself now more than ever. It's funny people say 'Welcome back' when I haven't gone anywhere.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.