Quotes About Introspection

It was a worrying trend. Everybody else was deep into their own stories, and all the stories were woven together just beneath the surface into a web that included Plum. But what was Plum's story?

he'd fantasized about having nothing to do except lie on his bed and sleep and stare into space, but now those empty hours were here, and they were getting old amazingly fast.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

She lay there thinking, on the rich, wet graveyard grass, before the tomb of some random parishioner—Beloved Son, Husband, Father—and what she thought was this: she'd been right about almost everything. She'd gotten nearly full marks. A minus again. Blew only one question. Here's the one thing I got wrong, she thought. I thought that they could never wear me down.

You don't learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.

a bunch of depressed, overeducated shut-ins, but they seemed human to her.

or maybe Eliot had decided that the tedium of solitude was ever so slightly greater than the tedium of Quentin's company.

I was perfectly happy where I was, deliquescing, atom by atom, amid a riot of luxury.

When he watched TV, all he saw was an image of his own face, with a mysterious empty city in the background.

She was dying to look, but she supposed that if she lived her life properly then by the time it was over she'd know what was in it. That was sort of the whole point, wasn't it? To understand your own story? Reading the book now would just be cheating. And what kind of jackass cheats at life?

His mind was an icy pond constantly in danger of thawing. He trod on it only lightly-its surface was perilously slick and who knew how thin. To break through would mean immersion in what was below: cold, dark anaerobic water and angry, toothy fish. The fish were memories. He wanted to put them away somewhere and forget where he'd put them, but he couldn't.

Now he had answers, but they weren't doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren't making things simpler or easier. They weren't helping.

shake him up. Get him out of his comfort zone so he could stop sneering at everybody else who was out of theirs. Get him thinking about something besides his own neuroses for a change.

You had to face yourself and deal with your shit, that's how you got somewhere.

But strange though it may seem, the more he judged, and the more he realized that men feared and acknowledged his right to judge, the more his innermost soul questioned man's right to judgment of any kind.

Dostoevsky's nature was two-fold, like Spinoza's, and like that of nearly all those who try to awaken humanity from its torpor.

Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people who, either for the sake of peace or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and will always be the masters of human thought.

More striking still, a broken man is generally deprived of everything except the ability to acknowledge and feel his position.

When man finds in himself a certain defect, of which he can by no means rid himself, there remains but to accept the so-called failing as a natural quality. The more grave and important the defect, the more urgent is the need to ennoble it.

Kada bi Darvin video u životu ono što je video Dostojevski, on ne bi govorio o zakonu samoodržanja nego o zakonu samouništenja.

Ce-a cautat la mine?Nu atat dragoste, cat satisfactia vanitatii lui.

Egli la guardava, come l'uomo guarda il fiore da lui strappato e appassito, in cui riconosce con difficoltà la bellezza per la quale l'ha strappato e rovinato.

Ogni volta, in qualunque momento le avessero domandato a cosa pensava, poteva rispondere senza errore: a una cosa sola, alla sua felicità e alla sua infelicità.

Selv om det ingen gjester var, var Anna like opptatt med seg selv som ellers og dessuten svært opptatt av å lese - både romaner og alvorlige bøker, slike som var på mote nå. Hun bestilte alle de bøkene som ble rosende omtalt i de utenlandske avisene og tidsskriftene hun mottok, og pløyet dem igjennom med den oppmerksomhet for det man leser som man bare finner hos mennesker i ensomhet.