Ella Maillart Quotes

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

I had to examine myself very thoroughly to find the right path personally.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

As I learn more about myself, I think people learn more about me as well. It seems to correlate that way. I learn how to represent myself more as it goes on.

I think as you get older, you find out more and more about yourself and what you like and what you don't like.

I believe that self-discovery is an ongoing thing.

Until we see what we are, we cannot take steps to become what we should be.

To know ourselves, is agreed by all to be the most useful Learning; the first Lessons, therefore, given us ought to be on that Subject.

My personality doesn't interest me.

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.

You don't find out who you are unless you work at it.

I believe that I have such a vanilla life. But maybe I come with a different perspective. I'm always trying to improve myself.

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own minds.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

I prefer stories about people who are, in a sense, trying to find better versions of themselves.

I've done thousands of interviews in my life, and it's a format that I quite enjoy, because I think of questions in interviews as an opportunity to sort of gauge my growth in a way. It gives me an idea of how I'm navigating this world that I'm in.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves... he may teach us how to accept change in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change.

I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.

I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.