Become a student of human nature.
-William Walker Atkinson, "A. P. Mukerji"

The analysis of character
is the highest human entertainment.
-Isaac Bashevis Singer

I have made a ceaseless effort
not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions,
but to understand them.
-Baruch Spinoza

It is easier to know men in general,
than men in particular.
-François de La Rochefoucauld

Everything and everybody is sooner or later
identified, defined, and put in perspective.
-William Saroyan

See through others by first seeing through yourself.
-Vernon Howard

There are two persons in the world we never see as they are, -
one's self and one's other self.
-Arsene Housesaye

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present.
There is each man as he sees himself,
each man as the other person sees him,
and each man as he really is.
-William James

To a certain degree we are really the person
others have seen in us.
-Max Frisch

Properly speaking,
a man has as many social selves
as there are individuals who recognized him.
-William James

To see ourselves as others see us is most salutary gift.
Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.
-Aldous Huxley

Everyone has three lives:
a public life, a private life, a secret life.
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

To understand another human being
you must gain some insight into the conditions
which make him what he is.
-Margaret Bourke-White

You must look into people
as well as at them.
-Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

We must see not only what each one says,
but also what he thinks, and also why he thinks it.
-Cicero

People's behavior makes sense
if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs and motives.
-Thomas Mann

To understand the heart and mind of a person,
look not at what he has already achieved,
but at what he aspires to do.
-Kahlil Gibran

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live,
or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair,
but ask me what I am living for, in detail,
and ask me what I think is keeping me
from living fully for the thing I want to live for.
-Thomas Merton

The best way of knowing
the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
-Walter Lippmann

Remember that every man
is a variation of yourself.
-William Saroyan

You understand others
to the exact degree that you really understand yourself.
-Vernon Howard

We meet ourselves time and again
in a thousand disguises on the paths of life.
-Carl Jung

In each of us
there is a little of all of us.
-George C. Lichtenberg

Each one's himself
yet each one's everyone.
-Theodore Roethke

One does not meet oneself
until one catches the reflection
from the eye of other than human.
-Loren Eiseley

Only in relationship can you know yourself,
not in abstraction, and certainly not in isolation.
-Jiddu Krihsnamurti

You can only see yourself
both physically and psychologically
through something external to yourself;
you need other people to discover who you are.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Other men are lenses
through which we read our own minds.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want to study yourself -
look into the hearts of others people.
If you want to study other people -
look into your own heart.
-Friedrich von Schiller

Every soul has its own way of life;
if you wish to follow another's way,
you must borrow his eyes to see it.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

For good or ill,
your conversation is your advertisement.
Every time you open your mouth,
you let people look into your mind.
-Bruce Barton

No matter what we talk about,
we are talking about ourselves.
-Hugh Prather

We love to see through others,
but we dislike being seen through.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We are what we pretend to be,
so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Camouflage is a game we all like to play,
but our secrets are as surely revealed by
what we want to seem to be
as by what we want to conceal.
-Russell Lynes

In most of our human relationships,
we spend much of our time assuring one another
that our costumes of identity are on straight.
-Ram Dass

People always tend to behave on the outside
consistently with the way they see themselves on the inside.
-Brian Tracy

What's going on in the inside
shows  on the outside.
-Earl Nightingale

One will appear to others
as one is in one's mind.
-Esoteric Maxim

The type of human being we prefer
reveals the contours of our heart.
-Jose Ortega y Gasset

Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
-Henry David Thoreau

One learns people through the heart,
not the eyes or the intellect.
-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"

Every man is a volume
if you know how to read him.
-William Ellery Channing

Tell me the landscape in which you live
and I will tell you who you are.
-Ortega Y Gasset

I have frequently gained
my first real insight into the character of parents
by studying their children.
-Arthur Conan Doyle

Tell me your profession,
and I will anticipate your beliefs.
-Bonaparte P. Maia

A man's level of consciousness
can be measured by the freedom of his attention.
-Robert S. De Ropp

Tell me to what you pay attention
and I will tell you who you are.
-Jose Ortega y Gasset

Wise men read very sharply all of your private history
in your look and gait and behavior.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

From a man's face, I can read his character;
if I see him walk, I know his thoughts.
-Petronius

There may be significant things to learn about people 

by looking at what annoys them most.

-Alain de Botton

You can tell the character of every man

when you see how how receives praise.

-Lucius Annnaeus Seneca

You can see the degree of evolution of a person
by noticing what makes them laugh
and what makes them cry.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul
and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh.
If he laughs well, he's a good man.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky

People show their character by what they laugh at.

-German Proverb

A person reveals his character
by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

In our leisure,
we reveal what kind of people we are.
-Ovid

Tell me what you love

and I'll tell you who you are.

-Haitian Proverb

Tell me whom you love,
and I'll tell you who you are.
-African-American Proverb

Tell me who admires and loves you
and I will tell you who you are.
-Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve

All that is in the heart
is written in the face.
-African Proverb

Show me your mother's face;
I will tell you who you are.
-Kahlil Gibran

I know faces,
because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves,
and behold the reality beneath.
-Kahlil Gibran

To make a correct estimation of a man,
look at the latter half of his life.
-Chinese Proverb

Tell me what you see vanishing
and I will tell you who you are.
-W. S. Merwin

Tell me what you feel in your room
when the full moon is shining in upon you
and your lamp is dying out,
and I will tell you how old you are
and I shall know if you are happy.
-Henri Frederic Amiel

Folks never understand
the folks they hate.
-James Russell Lowell

Do you wish to find out a person's weak points?
Note the failings he has the quickest eye for in others.
They may not be the very failings he is himself conscious of;
but they will be their next-door neighbors.
-Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

"Like perceives like."
One sees other persons, things and conditions
through the color of his own mental and emotional makeup.
-John K. Williams

Persons appear to us
according to the light we throw upon them
from our own minds.
-Laura Ingalls Wilder

Everyone sees the world
according the the idea he has of himself.
-Nisargadatta

What you think of someone
is what you think of yourself.
-Yunas Emre

When you see a good man, think of emulating him;
when you see a bad man, examine your heart.
-Chinese Proverb

Each man can interpret another's experience
only by his own.
-Henry David Thoreau

The world is as you see it.
You have your own glasses
with your own colors and prescriptions,
and you perceive the world through those glasses.
-Muktananda

Your neighbor's vision is as true for him
as yours is for you.
-Miguel de Unamuno

A man's private thoughts can never be a lie;
what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.
-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"

Everyone does and says
as much as he has understood.
-Tulsidas

A man is sometimes as different from himself
as he is from others.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The reality of the other person
is not in what he reveals to you
but in what he cannot reveal to you.
Therefore, if you would understand him,
listen not to what he says
but rather to what he does not say.
-Kahlil Gibran

We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture,
which we are willing the give the advantage of good light.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an optical illusion
about every person we meet.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

In our judgement of human transactions,
the law of optics is reversed;
we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.
-Richard Whately

It is those we live with and love and should know
who elude us.
-Norman Maclean

Every man has a rainy corner of his life
out of which foul weather proceeds and follows after him.
-Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody:

you have to slip around behind if you want to see it. 

-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"

Men, like peaches and pears,
grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds,
shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
-Juvenal

You must be capable of recognizing
what kind of light is shining from a person's eyes.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity,
and found a treasure in all of them.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton

They are not living up to their highest light,
or trying to make the best use
of the gifts and possibilities in their possession.
-Christian Larson

People are where they are
because that is exactly where they really want to be -
whether they will admit that or not.
-Earl Nightingale

I recognized the faces about me
With their lights and shades of truth.
-Jules Supervielle

When I try to see you,
my mind takes your form.
-Jnanadeva

I've watched you
with all the light and darkness I have.
-George Serafis

Time, which changes people,
does not alter the image we have retained of them.
-Marcel Proust

I have never experienced another human being.
I have experienced my impressions of them.
-Robert Anton Wilson

I cannot know you
if I hold on to the image I have of you.
-Sivananda Radha

You laugh at me because I am different,
but I laugh at you because you are the same.
-Anonymous

Once you label me
you negate me.
-Soren Kierkegaard

People are too complicated
to have simple labels.
-Philip Pullman

It is no use trying to sum people up.
-Virginia Woolf

We are all special cases.
-Albert Camus

If I really see you,
I will laugh out loud, or fall silent
or explode like a stone into a thousand pieces.
And if I don't,
I will be caught in the cement and stone of my own prison.
-D'jalal ad-Din Rumi

Take the clouds from your eyes
And see me as I really am.
-Miguel de Cervantes

You have never been curious about me;
you never wanted to explore my soul.
-Katherine Mansfield

Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors,
as attentive people like yourselves
might examine footprints to catch a thief.
-Orhan Pamuk

When we seek to discover the best in others,
we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
-William Arthur Ward

Through our own recovered innocence,
we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
-Henry David Thoreau

We wish to see in another what we should be ourselves
and we wish for another to inspire us to be so.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Discover in every human being
the principle which animates him or her.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

There is some one myth for every man,
which, if we but knew it,
would make us understand all he did and thought.
-W. B. Yeats

What is highest and noblest in a man
conceals itself.
-Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

I have seen gleams
in the face and eyes of the man
that have let you look into a high country.
-Thomas Carlyle

He's like a man you'd meet any place
until you recognize that ancient Face
The great God Pan is alive!
-Mike Scott

We know a thing or an individual
only when we respond to what is
good and beautiful in them.
-N. Sri Ram

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.
Not only have I found that when I talk
to the little flower or the little peanut
they will give up their secrets,
but I have found that when I silently commune with people
they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.
-George Washington Carver

If you see the soul in every living being,
you see truly.
-Bhagavad Gita

The one who has the power of insight
can see into human nature
He has insight into the heart of another person,
into the soul of another person,
into his life, his affairs, into his past, present and future.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The seers see the soul of every person
as clearly as an open letter;
for it is the nature of sight.

The seer cannot help seeing the soul of another,
perceiving the thoughts and feelings that a person has.

As the eyes cannot help seeing what is before them,
so the heart, once made clear and pure from the rust,
then sees as the eyes see.

Wherever his glance falls,
on nature, on characters,
he reads their history, he sees their future.

Every person or object stands before him
as an open book.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

He who looks upon us
through the eyes of God
will see our naked and essential reality.
-Kahlil Gibran

I do not deal with human beings
but with the expressions of God.
-Carleton Whitehead

If you believe in an unseen Christ,
you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
-Anthony Burgess