Witold Gombrowicz Quotes

I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

Other people are like a mirror which reflects back on us the kind of image we cast.

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in.

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

I have never tried to compare myself to anyone else.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

I don't think I gain anything by seeing myself.

There's only person in the world you can't see - yourself. But, God created - or whoever created us, we don't even have to argue that point - created us so perfect because we can actually see ourselves in other people.

There is no self-portrait of me.

I think I'm rather young and sprightly, but then you see pictures of yourself and think, 'Who is that old man?' and I realise I'm not as young as I thought I was.

When you look in the mirror, your 'appearance,' that outer you, is what you see first.

You can only see in someone else what you see in yourself.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older.

In therapy, I see myself in the mirror differently.

What do I see when I look in the mirror? One handsome man. No, I see the same person I have seen for the last 27 years: the person I believed I could be when I was a child, the person I have inspired and dreamed to be all my life, and that's the person I have seen, from being that big to as big as the roof - the same guy.

It's impossible not to constantly adjust the way you look at yourself.