Quotes About Introspection

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

The perfect man of action, is the suicide.

We sit and talk, quietly, with long lapses of silence and I am aware of the stream that has no language, coursing beneath the quiet heaven of your eyes which has no speech

It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.

If I ever let you down, it's not because I don't love you. It's because I don't love myself.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

I praise the Frenchman [La Bruyère], his remark was shrewd—How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!But grant me still a friend in my retreatWhom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,To peep at such a world; to see the stirOf the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

O Solitude! where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

In a fleshy tomb I am buried above ground.

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

All at once A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone.

I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The black truth, which we all know ourselves in our heats, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even you [Mark Twain] won't tell the black heart's-truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day the sun shown upon.

It comes down to this: Who am I? Am I my no-chemicals-added self, no matter how unhappy I may be? Or Should I swallow this pill, achieve tranquility and risk obliterating a certain essential part of me?

Those times you caught them out and showed them up -- they learned how stupid they are. But now you'll never hear the little song of their purring throats, and you'll never know what they think, when you say hello.

Every human being is a volume, worthy to be studied.

Life has a higher end, than to be amused.

Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him.

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

Why do you hate the South?I dont hate it…. I dont hate it…. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.