QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

If we knew ourselves well, rather than being flabbergasted to find ourselves on the ground, we would wonder how we manage to remain standing.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

Knowledge of self is very necessary for confession. This is why the saints could say they were wicked criminals. They saw God and then saw themselves, and they saw the difference.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love.

QUOTATION: Knowledge of Self

Knowledge of the self is also a safeguard against pride, especially when you are tempted in life. The greatest mistake is to think you are too strong to fall into temptation.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: Knowledge of Self

To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility…

--Flannery O’Connor

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

As the soul comes to know herself she also knows God better, for she sees how good he has been to her. In the gentle mirror of God she sees her own dignity: that through no merit of hers but by his creation she is the image of God. And in the mirror of God’s goodness she sees as well her own unworthiness, the work of her own sin. For just as you can better see the blemish on your face when you look at yourself in a mirror, so that soul who in true self-knowledge rises up with desire to look at herself in the gentle mirror of God with the eye of understanding sees all the more clearly her own defects because of the purity she sees in him.

--God to St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge is the Key to Humility

Since humility comes from a knowledge of ourselves, pride necessarily springs from ignorance of ourselves. Whoever, therefore, seriously desires to acquire humility must earnestly labor to know himself. How, in fact, can he be otherwise than humbled who, looking into his heart with the light of truth, finds himself filled with sins; defiled with the stains of sinful pleasures; the sport of a thousand errors, fears, and caprices; the victim of innumerable anxieties and petty cares; oppressed by the weight of a mortal body; so forward in evil and so backward in good? Study yourself, then, with serious attention, and you will find in yourself nothing of which to be proud.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

As soon as we begin to see our own limitations, we perceive perfection in others.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Pride

Know that one grain of pride suffices to overthrow a mountain of holiness. Be humble, then, and endeavor to know yourself.

--St. Paul of the Cross