Elias Canetti Quotes

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

There's no journey worth taking except the journey through one's self. That's the most important journey you take. I found that out as I went around the world many times: I was learning about me.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

I believe in the importance of seeking self-knowledge. The more I know myself, the more I feel empowered.

How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life.

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

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

The only journey is the one within.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

I enjoy exploring and finding myself.

The feeling of self-discovery, for me, is perennial.

The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

The better you understand yourself the less cause you will find to love yourself.

The knowledge of self is the most important thing, because how are you going to know God if you don't know yourself? How are you going to know anything if you don't know yourself?

I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.

Self knowledge is always bad news.

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

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.

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.

The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.