Quotes About Self-examination

Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions.

There is a time of reckoning in all our lives.

Ever since I got married I've been thinking night and day about whose fault it was, and every time I think about it, out comes a new fault to eat up the old one; but always there's a fault left.

If you would but consider your own unattractive exterior, your unamiable reserve, your foolish diffidence, which must make you appear cold, dull, awkward, and perhaps ill-tempered too;… if you had but rightly considered these from the beginning, you would never have harboured such presumptuous thoughts; and now that you have been so foolish, pray repent and amend, and let us have no more of it!

It's good that somebody has finally cut me down to size, has broken my pride, because I've been far too smug.

There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way

The interior life is often stupid.

Is this how I will forever live my life, owing explanations and apologies? When did this manner of making my way through the world start?

What have I done? What horrid crime committed? To me the worst of crimes-outliv'd my liking.

I have a sneaking suspicion that leading an examined life and being really tan aren't consistent with one another.

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

I am hard on myself. But isn't it better to be honest about these things before someone else can use them against you? Before someone else can break your heart? Isn't it better to break it yourself?

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

The quality of one's life is directly related to the quality of questions one asks oneself.

You don't throw your life away Going Inside You get to know who's watching you And besides you resides in your body

None of the rest of my life figures here.

When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

each person is required to ask, 'what is my authority?' - on what do you base your decisions? if it's yourself, then you are without excuse...

You gotta be able to explain things to yourself when the lights go off and you get in the bed. You gotta deal with you at the end of the day.

Oliver Cromwell came floating back to me. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

it was easier to be angry than to examine why

Look to the plank of wood in your own eye before you remove the mote of sawdust from mine