Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Self-awareness is something that we actually actively avoid.

It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.

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

Of all literary exercitations, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

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

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

The fundamental law of nature is to not know too much about yourself.

Most of us don't spend any time knowing ourselves. We just keep reacting.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Know thyself.

The most important thing about a person is that you know who you are and what you want. You should be capable of introspection and evaluate yourself.

Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself.

It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.

I think the better you know yourself as a person, the better an actor you can be.

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.

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction.

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

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.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.