Quotes About Introspection

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.

Every man can break, after certain time period. It's only necessary to find the levers that move his soul

If he had learned anything in manhood, it was that it didn't matter what other people thought of him—even the ones he respected. In the end, he would patch together a life, with its sorry errors and its triumphs, just as they had.

I've thought of a reason," Kit MacNeill said

This being human is a guest-house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out

Hence no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted—and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality.

In late life, we can pose this question internally no matter what activity we are engaged in, whether we are quietly drinking a cup of tea, sitting in a noisy meeting, cooking a festive family dinner, or running a marathon. Our identity or self-sense at any moment can be rooted in ego or rooted in soul. It's not what we're doing but how we're doing—our state of mind—that makes the difference.

There are at least five effective pathways for traveling inward to gain insight into the composition of our shadow: (1) soliciting feedback from others as to how they perceive us; (2) uncovering the content of our projections; (3) examining our "slips" of tongue and behavior, and investigating what is really occurring when we are perceived other than we intended to be perceived; (4) considering our humor and our identifications; and (5) studying our dreams, daydreams, and fantasies.

When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.

And, growing tired, we turn aside at last, remember our secret selves, seek out our towers, lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb; climbing, each, to his little four-square dream of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.

No god save self, that is the way to live ...

Silence thronged the room, and he was aware of the focused scrutiny of the three people who confronted him.

Know thyself! That was the best joke ever perpetrated. A steaming universe of germ-cells, a maelstrom of animal forces, of which he himself, his personality, was only the collective gleam.

I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it.

And if you can't make your life as you'd wish it, try, at the very least, to accomplish this much: do not make it less than what it already is by mixing too excessively with the masses, by hanging around and endlessly chattering. Don't cheapen your life by parading it around, hauling it everywhere and laying it out there for the dreary humbug of familiars and fellowship, until it comes to feel like a curious dead weight.

Walls Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about. And now I sit here and consider and despair. My brain is worn with meditating on my fate: I had outside so many things to terminate. Oh! why when they were building did I not beware! But never a sound of building, never an echo came. Out of the world, insensibly, they shut me out.

Inside every old person is a younger person wondering "What the hell happened?"

It placed its finger roughly on sore places.

There was something she should have experienced, something besides this. There was a path somewhere that she could not find. It was and it was not her own fault.

If all of our actions and judgements stemmed from reflected, consciously endorsed beliefs and values then not only would the world be a better place, but this book would be several pages shorter .

The cold water stung Cassandra's toes. She thought about everything—a blur of images and sounds: leaving Clarion, driving to the Cape, Noah kissing her, unpacking the car into the cottage, the cello singing out to the sea—and then she sank into the moment and let herself think about nothing. It had been so long since she'd been able to think about nothing. Nothing at all.

You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]