Quotes About Introspection

Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough

A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself "spiritually" the underdog. Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn.

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

some of the happiest moments of my life have occurred just before I fall asleep or wake up, when I linger in that twilight world between consciousness and unconsciousness, in a state of somnolent repose but also savoring the vital goodness of remaining this close to the vegetative in myself

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.

He sat brooding, a Buddha who had overeaten at dinner, trying to sort wisdom out of the calories.

I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.

I fear my ignorance.

The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.

Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.

Forget for a while that you have glasses on your nose and autumn in your heart.

Voi sapete tutto. Ma a che vi serve, se avete sempre gli occhiali sul naso e l'autunno nell'anima?

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

Music allows me to disconnect from my present reality, and communicate to my future wisdom.

Were I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul; The mind's the standard of the man.

Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

You should therefore contrive and practice some proper methods to acquaint yourself with your own ignorance, and to impress your mind with a deep and painful sense of the low and imperfect degrees of your present knowledge, that you may be incited with labor and activity to pursue after greater measures.

Once a day....call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.

This preference makes the difference between the judging people, who order their lives, and the perceptive people, who just live them. Both attitudes have merit.

Thinking or feeling judgment is vitally necessary, and introverted intuitives must develop it for themselves, because their utter conviction of their intuition's validity makes them impervious to the influence of outside judgment. The importance to introverted intuitives of cultivating a judging process to balance and support their intuition cannot be overemphasized.

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them