Self Observation Quotes

“Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“I love the storm and fear the calm.”
― Christina Queen of Sweden

“Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.”
― George Gurdjieff

“Theosophists refer to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as the Silent Watcher (the reader might here recall the author's suggestion to make self-observation or self-watching a major magickal goal). Another term for It is the Great Master. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn call It the Genius. Gnostics say the Logos. Zoroaster talks about united all these symbols into the form of a Lion (see Austin Osman Spare's work). Anna Kingsford calls It Adonai (Clothed with the Sun). Buddhists call It Adi-Buddha. The Bhagavad-gītā calls It Vishnu (Krishna is an Avatar of Vishnu). The Yi King calls him The Great Person. The Kabbalah calls It Jechidah.”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley

“The key to developing your intuition is developing your self-observation skills.”
― Laurie Nadel, Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power

“If we are aware and observant, we get a wake-up call early in our journey as coaches, a bit of a rude awakening as we bump into the reality that the greatest tool we need to cultivate is our self.”
― Pamela McLean, Self as Coach, Self as Leader: Developing the Best in You to Develop the Best in Others

“Self-evaluation proved to be distasteful business. The refraction of light created from an undulating wave of critical self-observation passing through a tarnished lens produces its own morose, self-negating fixations that can result in a dangerous downward spiral. Unless timely arrested, murderous bouts of self-hatred can destroy a person. A person must use self-detestation exclusively as a means to pry oneself away from the haunting specter created courtesy of the clamor, filth, and grunginess of their prior anarchism. Kick starting a stranded person’s emotional motors through reflective contemplation and thoughtful rumination acts to prod loose remote memories seared in the unspoken silence of a person’s unconscious memory bank. Self-discovery is also an uplifting affair. Contemplation helps one confront their streaked presence and realign their inner voice with the sanguine spirits of their ancestors that preceded one in the walk through time.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Maybe the Bards function, and the function of story in general, is to constantly recreate us by re-observing us. The storyteller holds up a mirror to us, and he or she has great power to show us in a flattering or insulting manner. As we re-observe ourselves (and the author believes we are frequently distorting the image we have of ourselves) through the nightly news, advertising media (magazines, billboards, advertisements, and so forth), television, and film, we are the consciousness that collapses the wave function and recreates ourselves.”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley

“Who is in the center of control? Is it my devotion to that which is grater than me, encouraging me to be? Or is it I, myself, that has an agenda here that is looking not to be? That is the question.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“Dialogue is about creating awareness through self-observation; it starts from the inside out, not the outside in.”
― Oli Anderson, Dialogue / Ego - Real Communication

“When they got to their hotel she went straight up to bed, but he paused to get a drink. There was, in the vestibule, a flower stall and he bought a handful of roses, stiffly wired into a bouquet, before proceeding to the oppressive gorgeousness of their bridal suite. The lift was lined with looking glass, so that as he shot upwards he got an endlessly duplicated version of himself, stout and nervous, a light cloak flung over his shoulder and flowers in his hand: an infinitely long row of gentlemen carrying offerings to an unforgiving past.”
― Margaret Kennedy

“There was one of the people of that time too, who had opened her soul to the spirit with the eyes of ice. He sat by one of them, keeping watch at the source of action, smiling scornfully at evil and good, fathoming everything, judging nothing, investigating, searching, picking apart, paralysing the movements of the heart and the force of thought by smiling scornfully without return.
The lovely Marianne carried the spirit of self-observation within her. She felt his eyes of ice and scornful smile follow every step, every word. Her life had turned into a play, where he was the only spectator. She was no longer a person: she did not suffer, she did not rejoice, she did not love, she performed the role of the lovely Marianne Sinclaire, and self-observation sat with staring eyes of ice and diligent, disassembling fingers and watched her perform.
She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and scornful, one half of herself sat and watched how the other half acted, and never did the peculiar spirit that picked apart her being have a word of feeling or sympathy.”
― Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berling's Saga

“Self-observation is the highest faculty of an advanced species - a species of conscience and character.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law

“he told me i was like a poem, all kinds of feelings bundled into one
but i am a song without melody, a screeching noise you don't want to hear
i am like an ointment but for the wrong wound; i can't heal you but i would burn
i am like that paragraph you delete before sending an okay
the last drop of coffee still stuck on your discarded cup
i am the rubber band on your wrist, i am lost as soon as you set me down
and like the moon on a moonless night
i am there but not in your world, not in your eyes, not in your heart.
i could have been your comfort shoe, but i broke your feet and you discarded me
so now I'm just an occupied space on your shelf you don't use anymore
I'm like the stain on the mirror when you're taking pictures; an irritation that stays
like the push and shove on the subway station that doesn't make you stop and stare
but the one that keeps you moving, completely unaware
i'm the stranger on the street that you see yet you don't
your eyes pass through me, not in focus, not in the zone
i'm not the art kind of beautiful, i'm the beauty that lies there, ignored
my existence is poetry, unnoticed, unaware, invisible to your eyes
and you just keep moving and i stay, i stay, i stay right there”
― Ren Storm