If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Self-awareness often leads to uncomfortable truths about oneself.
This quote speaks to the journey of self-discovery and the often unsettling realizations that come with introspection. It suggests that true knowledge of oneself is accompanied by the recognition of flaws, fears, and darker aspects of one’s personality which, while difficult to confront, are essential for personal growth and understanding.
Themes
Self-AwarenessIntrospectionPersonal GrowthHorrificationSelf-Knowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar about personal development, this quote can inspire discussion on self-discovery.
More from P.D. Ouspensky
All quotes →I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
Can one alter one´s chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
Similar quotes
Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.
Gilles DeleuzeRead
Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.
Bob DylanRead
The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
Cormac MccarthyRead
War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
Adrienne RichRead
The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.
Franklin D. RooseveltRead