Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This is a sign, I've come to think, of a kind of emotional disturbance - a reaction to inner fragility. I wish I were more able to just act and do, rather than constantly have to retreat and examine and think.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

By taking the time to stop and appreciate who you are and what you've achieved - and perhaps learned through a few mistakes, stumbles and losses - you actually can enhance everything about you. Self-acknowledgment and appreciation are what give you the insights and awareness to move forward toward higher goals and accomplishments.

To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.

If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

One of the things your unconscious mind does for you - and it's a great gift - is it gives you extra courage to view the outer world and it does that by giving you an extra-special view of yourself.

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.

Students should learn about the long-standing values of truth, beauty, and goodness, think hard about them, and interrogate them skillfully.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly - spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm going through, whether it's a relationship issue or negative thoughts, I can look back and see how far I've come. It makes me proud to see my progress and how I got through a bad situation.

I begin each day with prayer and meditation. Throughout the day, I use affirmations and positive intentions to move through blocks, and each evening, I close the day with self-reflection and an inventory of my growth throughout the day.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

It takes courage for a leader to identify and confront self-imposed barriers, to put in place the personal strategies required to unleash the energy, innovation, and commitment to self-development.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.

A philosophy of freedom must set out from the experience of thinking, for it is through this experience of thinking that a human being discovers his own self, finds his bearings as an independent personality.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

It is good for society to have this introspection.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The delights of self-discovery are always available.

Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.

The 'self-image' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

It is always our own self that we find at the end of the journey. The sooner we face that self, the better.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

As we go about our daily routines, our internal monologue narrates our experience. Our self-talk guides our behavior and influences the way we interact with others. It also plays a major role in how you feel about yourself, other people, and the world in general.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.