Quotes About Introspection

One ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one's life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.

Only the solitary individual is subject, like a thing, to the fundamental laws, and if someone goes out into the morning as it is breaking, or looks out into the evening full of occurence, and if he feels what is happening there, every hint of station slips from him as if from a dead man, although he is standing in the midst of life itself.

And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside.

No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself. Seek out the reason that commands you to write; discover if it has stretched out its roots into the deepest part of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would have to die if it were forbidden you to write.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; just let it happen.

but how can people who have already flung together and no longer set themselves any limits or tell one another apart, and who therefore possess nothing of their own any more, how on earth can they find a way out of themselves, out of the depths of a solitude that has already been spilt and squandered?

Alone he climbs on, up the mountains of primal grief. And not once do his footsteps echo from the soundless path.

Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde. Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag. Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde? mit meiner Nacht? mit meinem Tag? Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus, keine Stelle auf der ich lebe. Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe, werden reich und geben mich aus. [Der Dichter]

I only wanted to advise you also, to grow quietly and seriously throughout your development too; you cannot disturb it more violently than if you look to the outside and from the outside expect a response to questions that only your innermost feeling at your quietest hour can possibly answer.

because letter-writing requires more of me than just the basic wherewithal:

love your solitude and bear the pain it causes you with melody wrought with lament.

And you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground.

And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.

You have had many great sadnesses which have now passed by. And you say that their passing was also hard and upsetting for you. But I ask you to consider whether these great unhappinesses did not rather pass through you.

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and static moment when our future comes upon us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and accidental point when it happens to us as if from the outside.

Do not watch yourself too closely. Do not draw over-rapid conclusions from what is happening to you. Simply let it happen.

ad?na kader dediÄŸimiz ÅŸeyin d??ar?dan insanlar?n içine girmediÄŸi, insanlar?n içinden d??ar? ç?kt??? da yavaÅŸ yavaÅŸ farkedilecektir.

Es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Wenn man die Fragen lebt, lebt man vielleicht allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fremden Tages in die Antworten hinein.

am glad, in a word, that you have withstood the dangers of slipping into all this, and that somewhere you are living alone and courageous in a rough reality. May the year to come maintain and strengthen you in it. Ever yours, R. M. Rilke

If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn't insecurity with all its dangers so much more human? We are not prisoners of that room.

Si la seva vida quotidiana li sembla pobra, no la blasmi; blasmi's vostè mateix, digui's que no és prou poeta per invocar-ne les riqueses.

There is only one way: go into yourself. Seek out the reason that commands you to write; discover if it has stretched out its roots into the deepest part of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would have to die if it were forbidden you to write.