Quotes About Introspection

S___ likes being around other people; she just isn't particularly comfortable talking to them. She supposes that she is some variety of voyeur, enjoying the spectacle, breathing in the atmosphere, while experiencing uneasiness when asked to become part of it. None of this makes her unhappy. The life of a wallflower, she often thinks, is not such a terrible life.

Before you judge me, look in the mirror.

What is experienced from within cannot be categorized in concepts that have been developed for the external world of the senses.

In the case of lived experience, there is no difference between an object that is perceived and the eye that perceives it.

It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone.

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading

When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.

see with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own.

I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again—why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before—why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman in my life?

The human heart is unsearchable. Who is to fathom it?

accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.

I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me?

I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.

themselves in so many

You see I don't think much of my own sex, Mr. Hartright—which will you have, tea or coffee?—no woman does think much of her own sex, although few of them confess it as freely as I do.

I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.

There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing.

Perhaps our supercilious disgust with existence is a cover for a secret disgust with ourselves: we have botched and bungled our lives, and we cast the blame upon the environment, or the world, which have no tongues to utter a defense.

Let us trust to ourselves, see all with our own eyes; Let these be our oracles, our tripods and our gods.

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm: That is the top of sovereignty.

Silence is the beginning of wisdom.

When I introspect I perceive not merely sensations and ideas but desire, will, ambition, and pride as vital phases of me. Spinoza was right: "desiderium ipsa essentia hominis"—desire is the very essence of man. We are living flames of desire until we admit final defeat. Will is desire expressed in ideas that become actions unless impeded by contrary or substitute desires and ideas. Character is the sum of our desires, fears, propensities, habits, abilities, and ideas.