Coventry Patmore Quotes

I think self-knowledge is the rarest trait in a human being.

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.

I am natures greatest miracle. Since the beginning of time never has there been another with my heart, my eyes, my ears, my hands, my hair, my mouth. None that came before, none that live today, and none that come tomorrow can walk and talk and move and think exactly like me. I am a unique creature.

To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are! Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One.

Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone- over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience- I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?

I'm human, just like anybody else.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

I am just one human being.

I can explain my body and my brain, but there's something more. I can't explain my own existence - what makes me a unique human being.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.

You can either see yourself as a wave in the ocean or you can see yourself as the ocean.

I used to brush aside when people used to say 'Poonam, you're different.' It was much later that I realised, I was different.

Gail Sheehy tells us that "the delights of self-discovery are always available." All Fools' Day is the perfect day to engrave this wisdom in our hearts.

Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of ego-centrism.

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

Who are you, Master?' he asked. 'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?

The universe is not going to see someone like you again in the entire history of creation.

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

I saw myself. . . in the time I watched, I saw strength and frailty, pride and vanity, courage and fear. Of wisdom, a little. Of folly much. Of intentions many good ones; but many more left undone. On this alas, I saw myself a man like any other. But this too I saw . . . Alike as men may seem, each is different as flakes of snow, no two the same.You told me you had no need to seek the Mirror, knowing you were Annlaw Clay-Shaper. Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.

In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.

Within our whole universe the story only has the authority to answer that cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: "Who am I?"

In life you only have to travel 6 inches. That is the distance from your mind to your heart.