T. S. Eliot Quotes

Know thyself.

Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.

One of my problems is to find the self.

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

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

I see the ups and downs. I see the mistakes I've made. I see a funny person. I see a serious person. I see a diamond. I see the good times. I see the bad times. And I see knowledge of self. I see knowledge of self. I know who I am. When I look in the mirror, I see me.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

The great chastisement of a knave is not to be known, but to know himself.

No one can tell you who you are and what you are made of, only you yourself know what you are made of, and only you yourself can do the work to become who you want to be.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

I like when people know exactly, have a good sense of themselves, and know exactly what's good for them, I admire that, but I don't have anywhere near that kind of perspective on my own.

People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.

How can we truly understand who we are unless we know who we were and what we have the power to become?

The most dangerous thing you can do is know who you are.

I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.