Self Understanding Quotes

“Greater in battle
than the man who would conquer
a thousand-thousand men,
is he who would conquer
just one —
himself.
Better to conquer yourself
than others.
When you've trained yourself,
living in constant self-control,
neither a deva nor gandhabba,
nor a Mara banded with Brahmas,
could turn that triumph
back into defeat.”
― Buddha

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“No tree tries to become a certain kind of tree. No flower tries to become a certain kind of flower. The tree and the flower open up to the sun and soak up water. Thus, they grow into themselves. No judgment. No expectations. No commentary. Your task is the same. If you can stop trying so hard to become who you think you should be, and instead commit to understanding and nourishing yourself, you will bloom into whatever kind of person you are.”
― Vironika Tugaleva, The Art of Talking to Yourself

“It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating. It happens in the throes of conflict, when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“I wanted, for so long, for someone to understand me better than I understood myself, to take control of me, to save me, to make it all better. I thought that the hardest part of a loving, mutually healing relationship would be showing my vulnerable, raw spots to a person, even though I'd been hurt so many times before. This has not been the hardest part. The actual hardest part has been realizing that no one, no matter how compassionate and kind they are, will say the perfect things always. Myself included. The hardest part has been learning to communicate what I need, to hear what others need, to tell others how to tell me what they need. Intimacy takes a lot of communication. We all have triggers. I don't know your triggers and you don't know mine. No matter how much I love or trust you, you cannot possibly know exactly the words I need to hear, the words I don't want to hear, and the way I like to be touched. And how strange that we expect these things of each other. How strange, and self-sabotaging, that we refuse to get into relationships and friendships with people unless they treat us in just that perfect way. We've been raised to want fairy tales. We've been raised to wait for flawless saviors to rescue us. But the savior isn't flawless and the savior is not coming. The savior is you. The savior is still learning. The savior is never done learning. The savior is a human being. Forget perfect. Forget flawless. And start speaking your truth. Start speaking what you want and how you want it. And start asking and listening, really listening, to what the people around you say. Maybe, then, we will stop abandoning and hurting each other. Maybe, then, there's hope for us.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“The testimony of the greatest humans who have ever lived is that the way to make the most of ourselves is by transcending ourselves. We must learn to move beyond self-centeredness to make room within ourselves for others. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be confirmed by the quality of your life. We will attain – even if only momentarily – a transparency and a radiance of being which results from living both within and beyond yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding.”
― Don Richard Riso

“Accepting that I know so little about myself is the beginning of understanding everything about life.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The person in the mirror is waiting for you to believe that their reflection is greater than what can be contained by a thousand mirrors.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The measure of who you are will always exceed measurement.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I am sick with
my own self-judgment
masquerading as my assumptions
about other people’s judgments of me.”
― Vironika Wilde, Love and Gaslight

“Coming to the end of ourselves is one of the best ways that we can come to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Life's highest calling is to first understand who you really are and then to not really care about anything else other than your understanding. You become complete when you take charge of your activities and outcomes.”
― Aiyaz Uddin, Science Behind A Perfect Life

“Our conviction that God made a mistake is shaped by our inability to see the utterly ingenious purpose that lays behind His design. And we don’t see that purpose because our focus is riveted on the effort to correct something that was never wrong.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If what you do feels like work, it is not it”
― Lenfantvivant

“As long the self remains relevant, you are not free.”
― Lenfantvivant

“Life is so simple that it is exposing complexity as a human-made disorder.”
― Lenfantvivant

“Why hold on to mindful insanity if you can live sanely human?”
― Lenfantvivant

“The mind is what makes a being inhuman.”
― Lenfantvivant

“Being is the innate human, mind the cause of the evolutionary disorder.”
― Lenfantvivant

“Life has no rights. It was given free to you and will be taken gratis from you. Meanwhile, you can make it as pure a human is made for, blissfully and joyful.”
― Lenfantvivant

“What if you lose all your mind, imagination, and dreams? That is where you shift from reality to truth or from insanity to sane state.”
― Lenfantvivant

“As long there is society, creating wealth must be the first education, that can lead to freedom by the measures of people allowing you so made of financial means.”
― Lenfantvivant

“What did the woman tell you?" she asked. "What did she say when she took my hand?"

"That she could see everything inside you," he said. "And then she told me what was there."

Juliana didn't press any further. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to know what was inside of her.”
― Laura van den Berg, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us: Stories

“Make the most of who you are lest you fall prey to who you are not.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“One of the most dangerous things that you can do is to change yourself before you know yourself.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.

But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures.”
― Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal

“Developing a strong sense of self and nurturing your passions, hobbies, and personal growth is very important in figuring out who you are in life.”
― Janani Srikanth, TASTE OF FATE: Two Souls. One Serendipitous Connection.

“What I have to say, since it is itself a piece of philosophy, is an example of what I take philosophy to be, part of a more general attempt to make the best sense of our life, and so of our intellectual activities, in the situation in which we find ourselves.”
― Bernard Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline