Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

I've just tried to keep my eyes open, tried to read everything you can, and tried to see whether I see myself within it. If I do, then I can get excited about it.

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.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

We have to have a very clear understanding of ourselves.

We're not always the most insightful about ourselves.

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

The more you understand yourself, the more you will understand the world.

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.

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

How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.

If I do not understand myself, the whole complexity of myself, I have no basis for thinking.

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

Access to your true essence will give you insight into the mirror of relationship, because all relationship is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

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.

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

You mine your own past in order to get to know yourself.

To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.

To search for truth about self is as valuable as to search for truth in other areas of life.

Above all you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.

Is a little experience too much to pay for learning to know oneself?

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