Quotes About Introspection

As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from me....And now the work's done, there's only death.

Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position".

she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.

Odurna je životinjska priroda zvjeri u ?ovjeku, ali kad je ona u ?istom obliku, onda je ti s visine svog duševnog života vidiš i prezireš, pa ili pao, ili se održao - ti ostaješ ono što si bio; ali kad se ta ista životinja krije pod tobože estetskim, poetskim ovojem i iziskuje da joj se pokloniš, onda sam nestaješ u njoj i, obožavaju?i životinju, ne razlikuješ više dobro od zla. Onda je to užasno.

He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.

I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.

He felt that now over his every word, his every deed, there was a judge, a judgment, which was dearer to him than the judgments of all the people in the world. He spoke now, and along with his words he considered the impression his words would make on Natasha. He did not deliberately say what would be please her, but whatever he said, he judged himself from her point of view.

Formerly, when I was told to consider him wise, I kept trying to, and thought I was stupid myself because I was unable to perceive his wisdom; but as soon as I said to myself, he's stupid (only in a whisper of course), it all became quite clear! Don't you think so?' 'How malicious you are to-day!' 'Not at all. I have no choice. One of us is stupid, and you know it's impossible to say so of oneself.

But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face assumed an affected, unnatural, ugly expression as soon as she looked in the looking glass.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do not see in themselves.

No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.

I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous.

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. A living man knows himself not otherwise than as wanting, that is, he is conscious of his will. And his will, which constitutes the essence of his life, man is conscious of and cannot be conscious of otherwise than as free.

Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man whom while calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Aleksey Aleksandrovich had lived.

A writer is precious and necessary for us only to the extent to which he reveals to us the inner labour of his soul.

She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.

Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life.

Konstantin Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. For him words took away the beauty of what he saw.

But does it make any difference now?" he thought. "And what will be there, and what has been done here? Why was I so sorry to part with life? There was something in this life I didn't and still don't understand...

Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot help knowing? Why use words when words cannot express what one feels?

Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full.

I can't live except by my own heart.