E. L. Konigsburg Quotes

The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity.

To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.

I learned from my past.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

What is the good of experience if you do not reflect?

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Know thyself.

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

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

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.

If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees.

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

The spiritual journey has to do with learning to think more deeply and take as long a time as we need. That's the path to wisdom.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?

I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.

A wise man travels to discover himself.

Is a little experience too much to pay for learning to know oneself?

Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself, a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.

All knowledge leads to self-knowledge.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

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

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.

As I look back over my life, I've been an active person - obviously I was self-absorbed for a period of time.