John Davies Quotes

We read books to find out who we are.

A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

Self-reflection is the school of wisdom.

This precept descended from Heaven: know thyself.

It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.

The news that reaches your consciousness is incomplete and often not to be relied on.... Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!

My personality doesn't interest me.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

In my book, I was trying to get into my own soul.

Begin within. If it shows up in your life, it's coming to tell you something about you that you're acting like you don't know. Something about yourself, or your relationship with God.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.

There's something very touching to me about someone almost communicating to themselves in some way - trying to come to some deeper understanding of yourself and having compassion for yourself.

Know thyself.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

We have to have a very clear understanding of ourselves.

We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is.

All your life you compare and contrast, explore and search. But knowing yourself well is, well, elusive.

The knowledge of self is the most important thing, because how are you going to know God if you don't know yourself? How are you going to know anything if you don't know yourself?

Self knowledge is always bad news.

The well of your incompleteness runs deep, but make the effort to look away from yourself and to look toward Him.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.