“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”
Source: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
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Jean Rhys 38
novelist from Dominica 1890–1979Related quotes
“When you lose your temper, you lose a friend. When you lie, you lose yourself.”
Harvest Moon

Session 340, Page 25
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8

Variant translations
If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know not thy enemy nor yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
Literal translation: Know [the] other, know [the] self, hundred battles without danger; not knowing [the] other but know [the] self, one win one loss; not knowing [the] other, not knowing [the] self, every battle must [be] lost.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter III · Strategic Attack

On "The Heart is a Drum Machine" Documentary
Source: Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 418