Quotes About Introspection

When a dog wants to hang out the "Do Not Disturb" sign, as all of us do now and then, he is regarded as a traitor to his species.

There is far more to us than what we live.

Nor did he regard his partial deafness as an impediment. He claimed that the deafness was actually an advantage, freeing him from time-wasting small talk and giving him undisturbed time to "think out my problems." Late in life he would say that he was fortunate to have been spared "all the foolish conversation and other meaningless sounds that normal people hear.

How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I'm anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

But I identify myself, as always,With something that there's something wrong with,With something human.

Unbalanced power poisons introspection. In its vacated space lay living society's imperative questions, unseen, unphrased, unasked, unanswered.

useful knowledge was to be acquired only by doing, by living, by running headlong into the burning house of human experience and coming out singed and scorched, lungs full of smoke. Such knowledge would arise not during but after the experience, when you are sitting alone in the dark and re-creating everything you did and felt and assessing the wisdom or foolishness of each moment, the penalties and rewards.

There is a significant difference between feeling like a failure and admitting failure. The first can be a driving force; the second is the relinquishment of all effort, and therefore all hope. DeMarco understood this in his bones but had never articulated it to himself or anybody else. It had taken Thomas Huston to put it into words for him. They had been sitting on

recognize their own vituperous thought shaming.

He sagged against the tree, clung to it, pushed hard against the horrible images while he chanted to the bark, She is a dark-haired woman, green eyed and dusky with secrets. Her mouth is sensuous but sad, limbs long and elegant, every movement languid…

Maybe the gift of any great person is the power to converse with our own hearts.

We hope and dream; somewhere we find faith. Then doubt spreads through us as a dark liquid stream, fed not so much by the world outside us but through some source within our own souls. Faith and doubt appear in our lives like two visitors - coming uninvited and leaving at their whim. We feed them both, and when they leave us by ourselves we remember the voice of each and ask which one spoke our true hearts - when both did.

The ghosts of my heart strolled in.

First think, and if thy thoughts approve thy will, Then speak, and after, what thou speak?st fulfil.

I find that there is no speech that is not soliloquy. And yet, always, I sense an audience.

Successful people are not afraid to ask themselves tough questions and then go deep to get the answers. Unsuccessful people avoid the tough questions, and if they come across one, either they won't answer it or they avoid it. Of course, it's not enough to pose good questions, which is why successful people are also good listeners. Most people tend to be so busy formulating their next statement that they hear very little of what is said to them.

To grow old is to grow remorseful.

You could tell a lot about someone by listening to him talk about his enemies.

I can't really have any friends. It's sad, really. It's lonely. But that's how I am.

educators best serve students by helping them be more self-reflective. The only way any of us can improve—as Coach Graham taught me—is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves. If we can't accurately do that, how can we tell if we're getting better or worse?

Anybody can get chewed out. It's the rare person who says, oh my god, you were right. As opposed to, no wait, the reason is... We've all heard that

When you go into the wilderness, the only thing you can count on is what you take with you.

In the end, educators best serve students by helping them be more self-reflective. The only way any of us can improve—as Coach Graham taught me—is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves. If we can't accurately do that, how can we tell if we're getting better or worse? Some

Solitude is much preferred to the more disturbing isolation of sharing loneliness with a stranger. I