Quotes About Introspection

If we had been far apart even before the accident, what was I trying to recapture at this late date with all the fuss about the mask? Nothing was worth the trouble of getting back. There wasn't a single thing to hide from the eight uneventful years we had spent together; since I was enclosed by a wall of nonexpression thicker than my bandages, I had lost all right to complain.

you looked back at me... With transparent nonexpression, like rays of sunlight filtering through a forest swept with the cold winds of winter.…

In actual fact I did not perform a single real act but simply went round in circles writing these notes.

I was dazzled perhaps by the double aspect of the mask—was it the negation of my real face or actually a new face?—and I had been obliged to take an unavoidably circuitous road because I had forgotten the essential point that even this daze was a form of action.

Perhaps I had stumbled unexpectedly on the terrible truth that anyone closing the window of the soul with a mask of flesh was merely shutting away scar webs inside. Having lost my face, perhaps I could make contact with another world of real things, which were not pictures painted in windows.

I was afraid of my own shadow as long as I imagined others to be looking at me, but when I was actually looked at, I seemed to become aware of my real character. Perhaps in my imagination the mask was something that exposed me, but in actuality it was an opaque means of concealment.

Al no encontrar alimento en el mundo exterior, el hombre lo debe buscar en su interior; si no se consigue lo que se desea, se transforma en un ser que deja de desear, en lugar de persistir en el deseo.

I guess you're right. I can look at photo albums and get a reasonable idea of what I was like when I was three years old, or when I was a newborn.

But if a mirror ever makes you sad you should know that it does not know you.

If you want the truth, I'll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.

Look not left nor right. Look only at your own footsteps.

The people I knew, even the people I loved, did not always get things right, and they accumulated acts and omissions that lessened their sense of sureness.

Evinden ç?kman gerekmez. Masandan kalkma ve dinle. Hatta dinleme, yaln?zca bekle. Hatta bekleme bile, tamamen sessiz ve yaln?z ol. Dünya, maskesini düÅŸüresin diye, gelip kendini sunacakt?r sana, baÅŸka türlü olamaz; kendinden geçmiÅŸ bir halde k?vranacakt?r önünde.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. 

Unsichere Fragen und ungeeignetster Augenblick, sie zu stellen!

La consciencia de mis capacidades literarias es, a última hora del día y por la mañana, inabarcable.

He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn't quite dawned on him yet.

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you.

It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again.

We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter.