Quotes
Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
Mostly what I hate about Evie is the fact that she's so vain and stupid and needy. But what I hate most is how she's just like me. What I really hate is me so I hate pretty much everybody.
Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more—also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth.
“To know who you are without any delusions or sympathy is a moment of revelation that no one experiences unscathed.”
If thou think wholly upon thyself and upon God, what thou seest out of doors shall move thee little.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Look well unto thyself, and beware that thou judge not the doings of others. In judging others a man laboureth in vain; he often erreth, and easily falleth into sin; but in judging and examining himself he always laboureth to good purpose.
In the morning make thy resolves, and in the evening inquire into thy life, how thou hast sped to-day in word, deed, and thought;
How can he abide long time in peace who occupieth himself with other men’s matters, and with things without himself, and meanwhile payeth little or rare heed to the self within?
The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.
The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.
p. 231
The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!
