Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

The quip turns the classical injunction “Know thyself” into a comic confession of self-distrust. Instead of treating self-knowledge as a path to wisdom and moral improvement, the speaker suggests that an unvarnished encounter with one’s own motives, contradictions, and darker impulses might be so alarming that flight would seem preferable. The humor depends on exaggeration, but it also points to a serious Romantic-era insight: the self is not transparent, stable, or easily mastered. The line can be read as skepticism about introspection’s promise, and as an acknowledgment that self-knowledge can be unsettling rather than consoling.