Quotes About Introspection

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.

You have not known what you are--you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;

I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, / And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten / million years, / I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back! Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping, I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; And your very flesh shall be a great poem…

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

When I Read the Book When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me.

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I were not puzzled at myself!

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?" "Nature remains.

I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can. -from As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less       important than I thought

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold. -from A Song of the Rolling Earth