Peter Kreeft Quotes

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

I look for characters that speak to something in me.

I love books, and all the best ones are people analysing their own emotions. You can learn from that.

We can't give the truth to someone as an object, we can only point to it, inviting inspection. It is in that spirit that we can hear or read a teaching and then look at our own lives, at our own experiences to see whether anything might have been revealed about them.

Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.

Don't you think it's something strange that you rarely look at yourself in the mirror, except to do things like stand and ponder? I mean, in Shakespeare's day, it was thought that the mirror would reveal something, that it is trying to tell you something - not just to tidy your hair, but something more.

There's so much of our psychological makeup which is impermissible for us to explore because it's inappropriate or perverse or scary. I'm interested in exploring that in myself. I try to be honest with myself about everything that I feel. I'm not saying I'm able to do that all the time, but it's something I'm interested in.

Books should make somebody look at how they feel, be honest with themselves.

The only journey is the one within.

One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields insights about ourselves.

Everyone should go inward, get curious about themselves, and investigate their shadows. It's one of the most important gifts we can give humanity. It's one of our most vital causes.

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.

The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is.

The place you have to start to be any good at this, at acting, is with yourself. Everything is inside of you, all of it - the murderer, the great mother, the therapist, the husband. Everything is inside of us.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.

If I could know me, I could know the universe.