Quotes on Discovering Self

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.

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

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

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

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.

A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity...one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.

Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.