Self-reflection allows us to attain the true freedom and happiness in life. Reflecting ourselves enables us to understand who we truly are. Without self-reflection, we can’t grow, and it’s almost impossible to live successfully and peacefully without one.
Not only that self-reflection can help you achieve clarity for yourself, it can also help you be a better individual. To help you understand how powerful self-reflection is and how it can change your life, here are 90 Self Reflection Quotes that will absolutely help you grow and develop.
90 Self Reflection Quotes
1. “Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know myself, to know it completely.” —Kahlil Gibran
2. “Reichert offers us a Heracleitean stream of self-reflection into which we can step more than once, for we can see ourselves empathically mirrored in it: his interiority is our own.” —Donald Kuspit
3. “It’s difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction.” —Russell Brand
4. Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.” —Terence McKennaics
5. “Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.” —Maxwell Maltz
6. “One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” —K.L. Toth
7. “To achieve happiness I advocate four major principles, the principles of love, wisdom, self-reflection, and progress.” —Ryuho Okawa
8. “One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it.” —Hermann Hesse
9. “This above all; to thine own self be true.” —William Shakespeare
10. “When you hit 30, it’s that time of self-reflection.” —Hayden Schlossbergs
11. “What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.” —George Eliot
12. “I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and outcomes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of.” —Criss Jami
13. “Self-reflection is the gateway to freedom.” —Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
14. “Can’t get away from your own self.” —Holly Black
15. “The cosmos is evolving toward greater self-reflection, allowing us to open the eye of Spirit and see our source.” —Alex Grey
16. “Instead, the entire course of our lives is inevitable, dictated by the certainty that our real self will eventually surface.” —Kathryn Schulz
17. “What distinguishes normal people is that we share a metaphorical dagger; the concerns of our self – reflection.” —Carlos Castaneda
18. “Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion. “ —Suzan-Lori Parks
19. “Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.” —Vera Nazarian
20. “Examining your thoughts is an important part of the practice of self-reflections” —Ryuho Okawa
21. “Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes.” —Lawrence Bossidy
22. “People who have had little self-reflection live life in a huge reality blind-spot.” —Bryant McGill
23. “Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.” —D.H. Lawrenc
24. “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.” —Marcus Garvey
25. “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” —The Sickness Unto Death
26. “Let go of rejections and focus on self-reflection. For it is within that you will find the light you seek.” —Amy Leigh Mercree
27. “To make of one’s self a sounding-board of the Divine, a harp of life, vibrant, and sweet, and healing.” —Muriel Strode
28. “Be that self which one truly is.”— Soren Kierkegaard
29. “The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.” —Michelangelo
30. “The sooner we face that self, the better.” —Ella Maillart
31. “The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” —Hindustani Proverb
32. “If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” —Napoleon Hill
33. “The treasure of self is buried under the rainbow and yet glows beyond the sun.” —Terri Guillemets
34. “Engaging in meditative self-reflection and gaining increased control of inner experiences provides a person with a sense of control over fear and trembling and the chaos of life.” —Kilroy J. Oldster
35. “You cannot have a meaningful life without having self-reflection.” —Oprah Winfrey
36. “True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one’s true character, to be altogether one’s self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion.” —Corliss Lamont
37. “True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. “ —Nhat Nanh
38. “Selfishness it its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one’s self.” —William B. Ogden
39. Honest self-reflection opens your mind to reprogramming, change, success and freedom.” —Unknown
40. “I give the niggaz what they came to see, a reflection of oneself where they aim to be.” —T.I.
41. “Success in any endeavor depends on the degree to which it is an expression of your true self.” —Ralph Marston
42. “I think self-destructiveness is given a really bad rap. I think it can also mean self-reflection and poetic sensibility.” —Courtney Love
43. “Self-reflection is an important stage to diagnose, develop and strengthen your creativity.” —Pearl Zhu
44. “Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
45. “After a disappointment analyze your actions, get feedback from friends, and take inventory of what you could do better next time. This type of self-reflection and improvement will ultimately make success inevitable.” —Jillian Michaels
46. “But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.” —Thomas Szasz
47. “We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
48. “Your greatest self has been waiting your whole life; don’t make it wait any longer.” —Dr. Steve Maraboli
49. “The self is fundamentally an illusion arising as a reflection of the soul in matter, much as a clear lake at midnight reflects the moon.“ —Fred Alan Wolf
50. “Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.” —Michel de Montaigne
51. “Examining your thoughts is an important part of the practice of self-reflection.” —Ryuho Okawa
52. “It is great to be introspective, self analysis can be useful, but only if it results in action.” —Joe Sacco
53. “The self that is self we imagined we were our whole lives. But we were never that self, not really.” —Cecil Baldwin
54. Transformation of the self requires a radical alteration in the way that we perceive the world and derive meaning.” —Kilroy J. Oldster
55. “Self-reflection entails asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future.” —Robert L. Rosen
56. “What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self. “ —Helen Keller
57. “Doubt, not self-reflection, comes from a destructive energy, and when it rears its head, I talk to it like a lunatic.” —Gwyneth Paltrow
58. “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” —Marianne Williamson
59. “Self-reflection is the school of wisdom.” —Baltasar Gracian
60. “We picked the dimension according to our self-reflection.” —Frederick Lenz
61. “Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self.” —Huston Smith
62. “You cannot tie your fiance to the railroad track of self-reflection and personal improvement.” —Amy Dickinson
63. Progress in the development of oneself depends upon how honestly a person judges oneself, and what corrections a person makes to align their character with an ideal version of a self.” —Kilroy J. Oldster
64. “When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.” —Wayne Dyer
65. “Women need real moments of solitude and self reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.” —Barbara De Angelis
66. “Authenticity is very important – be true to one’s self.” —Laila Ali
67. “Self-reflection is a kind of self-judgment. The difference is just this – the former is positive and the latter is negative.” —Balroop Singh
68. “Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted – it is an intimate date to yourself.” —Paul TP Wong
69. “Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.” —Henry Van Dyke
70. “Our actions reflect the distilled wisdom that we possess of the innermost self.” —Kilroy J. Oldster
71. “The ultimate mystery is one’s own self.” —Sammy Davis
72. “Less and less is life animated through personal discovery, intimacy with others, or self-reflection.” —Kirk J. Schneider
73. “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
—May Sarton
74. “He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.” —B. R. Ambedkar
75. “I remind myself that too much self-reflection can make even a toadstool fall into a deep slumber.” —Susan Ornbratt
76. “When the mind is still, the beauty of the Self is seen reflected in it.” —B.K.S Iyengar
77. “To realise the Self is to be still.” —Ramana Maharshi
78. “The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne
79. “The shift in American society from admiring Christians to fearing and criticizing them provides an opportunity for self-reflection.” —Philip Yancey
80. “The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming.” —Kirkegaard
81. “Until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.” —Iyanla Vanzant
82. “Self-reflection is a desire felt by the body, as well as the soul.” —Susan Griffin
83. “The authentic self is the soul made visible.” —Sarah Ban Breathnach
84. “Emotions are there to enjoy life; but they are not used in self-reflection because they inhibit a proper reflection.” —Frederick Lenz
85. “We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
86. “A worldview is probably an expression of self.” —Michael Leunig
87. “Victory in physical battles requires strength, muscles, and skill; but the fight is never tougher and victory is never sweeter than in the battles over self. ” —John Bytheway
88. “Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.” —Indra Devi
89. “Wearing a mask can thus be a strange thing: sometimes, more often than we tend to believe, there is more truth in the mask that is what we assume to be our “real self.” —Slavoj Žižek
Final Thought
Growing and being successful in life is a lot harder without self-reflection — that is certain. Take your time analyzing yourself.
You’ll be able to push the boundaries and surpass your limitations by knowing who you are and what are your capabilities. Let the self reflection quotes to make your life much better and easier.
Allen Wei is someone who believes in living his best life, focusing on balance, happiness, and relaxation. He fosters a positive lifestyle in terms of his body, mind, and environment, and he is a huge proponent of learning to be balanced via relaxation techniques integrated into our busy lives.
