Quotes About Introspection

That's how we're going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

I find out what I really want by seeing what I do," said Ender. "That's what we all do, if we're honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided

there some great wisdom to be gained by calibrating exactly how worthless a mind I have?

I suspect that this is the true tragedy of the human condition. The more closely we're involved with other people, the more isolated and misunderstood we feel. Because nobody can possible know us, and we can't possible know anybody, not even ourselves. Wakers, p 427/566

Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself.

Yes, he was alone, but he needed to be alone; until now, he had not really understood how painful and heavy it was to have the needs of others always in his heart and on his mind.

What does it matter, to tell yourself that the thing controlling you comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide?

We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously.

He spent the afternoon alone in the streets.

Peter had even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best themselves, and flatter them.

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Only the shallow know themselves

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.