All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Interpretation
Self-awareness can reveal uncomfortable truths about oneself.
This quote reflects the complexity and often unsettling nature of self-knowledge. Goethe suggests that truly understanding oneself can lead one to confront fears or aspects of their character that may be difficult to accept, possibly leading to a desire to escape those realities.
In practice
During a personal development workshop, to encourage participants to embrace self-discovery.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.
What grieves me most in my past offenses, O my loving God, is not so much the punishment I have deserved, as the displeasure I have given You, Who are worthy of infinite love.
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left.
There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
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