Source: Demian (1919), p. 9 Prologue
Context: I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.
“They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:
Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought
The other only changed, himself the same.”
Change from The London Literary Gazette (23rd August 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
Foreword http://www.bartleby.com/55/100.html
1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)
"Three Methods Of Reform" in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 29
As quoted in The Artist's Way at Work : Riding the Dragon (1999) by Mark A. Bryan with Julia Cameron and Catherine A. Allen, p. 160
Variant: Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
“Changed and yet the same, I rise again.”
Original: (sp) Eadem mutata resurgo
Gravestone marker (1705) referring to the , which remains the same after mathematical transformations. He considered it a symbol of resurrection. Bernoulli wanted the logarithmic Spira mirabilis, "the marvelous spiral," engraved on his headstone, but an Archimedean spiral was placed there instead.
“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.”
This is almost always attributed to US Ambassador Francis Meehan http://www.nndb.com/people/060/000121694/, though without citations, and only very rarely to Patton.
Misattributed
“Something had changed—but it was not the street—
The street was just the same—it was himself.”
The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)