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About this quote

What does it mean?
Knowing yourself too well might ruin your moral self-image.
In plain terms
Complete self-know can hurt your virtue.
What can you take from it?
Self-honesty has moral costs.

Where it applies

  • therapy
  • self-help
  • ethics

Putting it to work

  • balance honesty with compassion
  • expect flaws in yourself

Questions to consider

  • Does knowing your faults make you worse?
  • Is some self-deception useful?

Another view

Many argue self-knowledge builds virtue.

More from F. H. Bradley

  1. The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care.

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  2. The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

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  3. One said of suicide, 'As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.' And another answered, 'But when one has ceased to have them, too often one canno…

    Permalink to quote #11

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