Echoes

He who cannot find himself the retreat of his own soul, let him appeal to solitude — if he can even bear himself.

Withdraw into yourself as much as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Never did I think so much, never did I realize my own existence so much, never was I so much alive, so much myself, as in those journeys which I made alone and on foot.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you—are you there? I have returned, here I am again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you anew. Shall I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call "divine". There is no other way. All other ways are false paths.

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.