Quotes About Introspection

When I talk to you, I do not look at you, often, for, can you understand, I do not talk to your eyes, though they are dark and fine, nor to your ears, hidden under a graceful toss of silky hair - but to you away inside, beyond.

My known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.

There was nothing for her anywhere, but this black disintegration. Yet, within all the great attack of disintegration upon her, she remained herself. It was the terrible core of all her suffering, that she was always herself. Never could she escape that: she could not put off being herself.

o uniune cu adev?rat perfect? este aceea în care fiecare accept? faptul c? în cel?lalt exist? mari spaÈ›ii necunoscute.

In the end, the soul is alone brooding on the face of the uncreated flux, as a bird on a dark sea...

And voices in me said, if you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured.

was in the grip of his moral, mental being.

Before I can face the future, I must first deal with the past.

See the pot as your own head; see the water as your lifeblood.

Looking deeply into the writings and sutras of past teachers does not mean to learn something that is unrelated to us. Studying ancient writings means to study our lives. To study the Tenzo Ky?kun came to mean for me that I would be studying my own life.

Sh?b?-genz?: Genj? K?an (Actualizing the Koan):

drinking, being. The practical problem in this way of thinking is that all too often people simply wind up doing less and less zazen, deluding themselves into believing that since all their activities are zazen there is no need to sit and face the wall and do zazen.

Be very clear about this: A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.49 As an ancient teacher has said: Two-thirds of our days are already over, And we have not practiced clarifying who we are. We waste our days in chasing satisfaction, So that even when called, we refuse to turn around. How regrettable.50

When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.

To know yourself is to forget yourself.

If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don't know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God.

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.

Let's realise that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let's realise that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself o herself, and condemn us in return.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.

There's magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let's examine the facts.

Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don't criticise themselves for anything no matter how wrong it may be.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

There you are; human nature in action, wrongdoers, blaming everybody but themselves. We are all like that.

British writer G. K. Chesterton's reply to an invitation by the Times to write an essay on the subject "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton's response: Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton