Quotes About Introspection

they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security.

It was exhausting, for no matter what the scheme I conceived, there was one constant flaw—myself. There was no getting around it. I could no more escape than I could think of my identity. Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with each other. When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

And I knew in spite of the anguish within me that the sun goeth down.

There's nothing like isolating a man to make him think.

Toata viata am cautat ceva si, oriunde m-as fi indreptat, cineva incerca sa-mi spuna ce este acel ceva. Am acceptat raspunsurile fiecaruia, desi erau deseori contradictorii unele fata de altele sau chiar fata de ele insele. Am fost naiv. Ma cautam pe mine insumi si intrebam pe oricine, mai putin pe mine, intrebari la care eu, si numai eu, puteam gasi raspunsul.

HARRY: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at, Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks Incriminate, but that other person, if person, You thought I was: let your necrophily Feed upon that carcase.… T. S. Eliot, Family Reunion

And he'll learn that his index and second fingers are meant for something other than playing the game of stink-finger and pulling his bow.

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

A great man is always willing to be little.

People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Ne te quaesiveris extra. (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.