Quotes About Introspection

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds—the one inside us and the one outside us.

Experience seems to come from a distance.

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.

The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

I put an apple on my table. Then I put myself inside this apple. What tranquility!

Tu peux être tranquille. Il reste du limpide en toi. En une seule vie tu n'as pas pu tout souiller.

Seul, Être à soi-même son pain, Et encore, il s'engrange qu'il dit, Et pète par toutes les fissures. En blocs, en lames, en jets et en cristal, Mais derrière le mur de ses paroles, C'est un grand sourd.

I myself was a torrent, I was drowned, I was navigation. My great constitution hall, my ambassador's hall, my hall for gifts and exchanges into which I usher foreigners for a first examination—I had lost all my halls with my servants. I was alone, shaken around violently like a dirty thread in an energetic wash.

Study is the child of silence and mystery.

Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality.

At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.

I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.

Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.

I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age.

If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

When you're in prison, you either embrace religion or you reject it. I embraced it it was a very spiritual time for me.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue.

[Charles] Sumner's mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

The best date movies give you something to talk about. A movie that's a downer is a great way to find out about someone.