“How could a man know the truth of his own soul?”
“Culture is like a giant mirror which enables us to see who we are more clearly. The various facets of a culture also provide us with the means to change what we do not like in the mirror, and retain what we cherish most.”
“The closer you come to your authentic self, the simpler everything becomes. Listen to your intuition. It will tell you who you are.”
“I know that I’ve never been perfect. I think we determine what’s perfect to us. I think we understand perfect doesn’t come perfectly. If I was to be bare face or a face full of make up. I won’t be perfect until I determine what I see as perfect enough.”
“I could not see beauty until I held hands with chaos in silence.”
“Understanding who you are is critical for your career advancement. Self-awareness helps you get ahead.”
“I do not laugh; I do not cry; I m sweating out the will to die. My past is sliding down the drain; I soon will be myself again.”
“Be sure that whatever you are is you.”
“The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away.”
“Bad friends are those who make you cry. Good friends are those who understand why you re crying. Best friends are those who do everything to stop you from crying.”
“No human being can be so honest as to become completely false.”
“Self-contemplation is a curse That makes an old confusion worse.”
“I am more than less, but less than worthy. Worthy to be heard, but heard in silence”
“I am happy not because I am without pain, but because I know I am not that pain.”
“I ve recovered my tenderness by long looking; I m a Socrates of small fury. The waves bends with the fish. I m taught As water teaches stone. Believe me, extremest oriole, I can hear light on a dry day. The world is where we fling it; I m leaving where I am.”
“Would he ever come back? He wondered. The water filled his ears with its own rush, and he was comforted by the realization that, in fact, he never left.”
“If you have to walk along a dark mountain path, don’t you prefer to have a flashlight to shine on the path ahead? I would suggest that it is possible to have that flashlight in life all the time. What does a flashlight give us? Light. That is, a flashlight sheds light. It is like the faculty of attention—if we turn our full attention to something, we learn more about that thing. We are seeing it with more light. Our attention is our ‘flashlight.’ So it’s all about how much and how fun an attention we consciously bring to life. This quality of attention doesn’t make us hesitant, or slow to decide, particularly—just as the flashlight doesn’t make us hang back on the trail. So, how do we get to the better quality of attention? With attention! That is, we turn our attention on our attention; we start by trying to see how we don’t pay attention. We sort of keep that light on ourselves. ‘Know thyself’ has been an honored ancient teaching, and it’s still a cornerstone of the world’s greatest philosophies. If you watch yourself honestly, in a detached way—not guilt-tripping yourself when you screw up—you gradually learn where it was that you were just blundering along, reacting sort of mechanically, and being asleep even as you were in your waking day. Another way to make this happen is by returning your whole attention to the present—to what’s happening now, in this moment, and this moment, and on—within yourself and around you.”