Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.

All knowledge leads to self-knowledge.

Self examination is the key to insight, which is the key to wisdom

You know more about me than I do about myself, that's probably true.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

We are wiser than we know.

You can learn a lot if you become a student of what's happening to you.

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.

Tell me who I am. (29)

I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?

Ultimately all knowing, from the highest to the lowest, is the result of experience; it arises on the way of experiences.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened.

If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.

Those who would know the world, seek first within your beings' depths; those who would truly know themselves, develop interest in the world.

When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.

Enlightenment is its own reward, its own punishment. You begin to see so much more. And so much more sees you.

Intelligent people know others. Enlightened people know themselves.