Quotes About Introspection

Sentirse solo no es sentirse inferior, sino distinto. El sentimiento de soledad no es una ilusión —como a veces lo es el de inferioridad— sino la expresión de un hecho real: somos, de verdad, distintos. Y, de verdad, estamos solos.

you are you and your body of steam, you and your face of night, you and your hair, unhurried lightning, you cross the street and enter my forehead, footsteps of water across my eyes, listen to me as one listens to the rain

En lugar de interrogarnos a nosotros mismos,¿no sería mejor crear, obrar sobre una realidad que no se entrega al que la contempla, sino al que es capaz de sumergirse en ella?

al entrar en ti mismo no sales del mundo

like a mountain path that ends at a cliff I travel along the edge of your thoughts, and my shadow falls from your white forehead, my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces and go with no body, groping my way

Los ojos se cierran, las palabras se abren.

Si la soledad del mexicano es la de las aguas estancadas, la del norteamericano es la del espejo. Hemos dejado de ser fuentes.

A saint speaks with God or with himself, two forms of silence.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.

I am where I was: I walk behind the murmur, footsteps within me, heard with my eyes, the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps, I hear the voices that I think, the voices that think me as as I think them. I am the shadow my words cast. from Draft of Shadows

Reversibility: seeing through opaqueness, not-seeing through transparency. The wooden door and the glass door: two opposite facets of the same idea. This opposition is resolved in an identity: in both cases we look at ourselves looking. Hinge procedure. The question "What do we see?" confronts us with ourselves.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.

is not really a system of painting but a method of internal investigation. It is not the philosophy of painting but painting as philosophy.

Es posible que lo que llamamos pecado no sea sino la expresión mítica de la conciencia de nosotros mismos, de nuestra soledad.

I am the shadow my words cast

There was only one huge world with no back to it A world like a sun One day it broke into tiny pieces They were the words of the language we now speak Pieces that will never come together Broken mirrors where the world sees itself shatterered

Self discovery is above all the realization that we are alone

Days that haunt the poem's single day are like the air revisiting this house of vocables that you and I designed: its windows watch an ocean and a sky to learn what portion of the other's mind the jet-trails presage: letters are stones that fly to settle in a wall of which the line traces an hour, a where, a place of thought. What is more palpable, the thing we saw or the images its recollection brought into the mind to ask us what we are? from "Day

El sentimiento de soledad, por otra parte, no es una ilusión —como a veces lo es el de inferioridad— sino la expresión de un hecho real: somos, de verdad, distintos. Y, de verdad, estamos solos.

Estamos solos. La soledad, fondo de donde brota la angustia, empezó el día en que nos desprendimos del ámbito materno y caímos en un mundo extraño y hostil. Hemos caído, y esta caída, este sabernos caídos, nos vuelve culpables. ¿De qué? De un delito sin nombre: el haber nacido.

Death and birth are solitary experiences. We are born alone and we die alone.

Si es real la luz blanca de esta lámpara, real la mano que escribe, ¿son reales los ojos que miran lo escrito?

If I become overconfident I will recall my failures. If I overindulge I will think of past hungers. If I feel complacency I will remember my competition. If I enjoy moments of greatness I will remember moments of shame. If I feel all-powerful I will try to stop the wind. If I attain great wealth I will remember one unfed mouth. If I become overly proud I will remember a moment of weakness. If I feel my skill is unmatched I will look at the stars. Today I will be master of my emotions.

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.