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SELF-KNOWLEDGE quotes
The precept, "Know yourself," was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind; but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
"Know thyself," was counted one of the oracles of the Greeks. It was inscribed as one of their three great precepts, in letters of gold, on the temple at Delphos, and regarded as divine.
To reach perfection, we must be made sensible of our failings, either by the admonitions of friends, or the invectives of enemies.
The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves—our weaknesses, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.
Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.
Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but action.—Strive to do your duty, and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.
Absalom, who was a fool, wished himself a judge; Solomon, who was a wise man, trembles at the undertaking, and suspects his own fitness for it. The more knowing and considerate men are, the better they are acquainted with their own weakness, and the more jealous of themselves.
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do; dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay or growth of it. If with thy watch, that too be down, then wind up both. Since thou shalt be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
The highest and most profitable learning is the knowledge of ourselves. To have a low opinion of our own merits, and to think highly of others, is an evidence of wisdom. All men are frail, but thou shouldst reckon none so frail as thyself.
An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.
Our own opinion of ourselves should be lower than that formed by others, for we have a better chance at our imperfections.
Self-knowledge is that acquaintance with ourselves which shows us what we are, and what we ought to be, in order to our living comfortably and usefully here, and happily hereafter.
No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself will ever have a true understanding of another.
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
The height of all philosophy is to know thyself; and the end of this knowledge is to know God. Know thyself, that thou mayest know God; and know God, that thou mayest love him and be like him. In the one thou art initiated into wisdom; and in the other perfected in it.
Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our back.
Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.
No man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one, who mistook them.
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
Learn God, and thou shalt know thyself.
Common and lamentable is our mental self-ignorance, that men ignore their intellectual faculties, their only self-culture consisting in the care of their bodies.—Like the rich fool in the parable, they think only of the stomach, even when they address their words to the soul.
Man, know thyself; all wisdom centres there.
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