Quotes About Introspection

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. 'Then why are you here?

seeing Darija or doing anything but my

I've thought a lot about it: how you can ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom. I've thought about all the things I could have done differently, and if it would have led to another outcome. But thinking doesn't change anything, does it?

And Peter, with his 20/20 vision, cast his eyes downward, so that he wouldn't see.

Loneliness is a mirror and it recognizes itself

I've always wondered whether she sees what I do when I look at her.

I die. Before I die my body turns hair-side-in. People come from everywhere to see the insides of themselves. But the sight makes them lose the will, and all die. O the embarrassment.

I don't think I'm special. I want you to know that," Odile says sharply. "I don't think I'm better than everybody else.

I'm still trying to figure things out too. All I know is a couple of very unimportant things.

And he says, "I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me. And I think I realized that I'm average, that there's nothing remarkable about me. And I wanted to know if this is something other people think about.

Slow as your own dubious grace.

For years, Thisbe will later think of that one moment in the field as the only time she was ever sure about anything in her life.

I have my little corner in the literary universe and I'm okay with that

T]hose who refuse to consider what they do are cloaked in the shadow of stupidity, but they enjoy the shade. It is cool and comfortable there.

Give yourself-not just your time-to prayer. Remember that prayer is not an appendix to your life and your work, it is your life your real, spiritual life-and your work. Prayer is the thermometer of your soul.

Look in the mirror and decide once and for all: Am I biological or mechanical? Is my deepest essence a machine or not?

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much - everything - in a flash - before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.

We see so much that we in fact see nothing, and we know so much that we no longer possess anything that is our own, that is to say, something we could not have learned, something that arises out of the virtues and errors of our own self.

What on earth shall I do

A writer had to stand the silences that came with being alone[…]. You could think when you were alone, and writers needed to think.

Everything in life should be done with reflection.

It is not suffering as such that makes someone appreciate love, it is only when suffering pierces our vanity—which happens when we do not blame someone else for our pain—that it awakens a deeper respect for love.

The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

After she had spoken she looked out the window once more. Darkness had fallen and she could see only her own reflection in the glass. The intruder had gone, though she had scarcely noticed him slip away. She looked at herself in the window. Soon there would be no reflection of her anywhere at all.