Quotes About Introspection

And do you really never look at anything -- anything at all -- and consider it might be beautiful in itself?

It's a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little.

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.

When our identities are tethered to externals, our sense of self-worth is always in danger. In the end, we become hypersensitive, insecure, and discontent, always comparing ourselves to the next parent, the next young professional, the next pastor across town. But

Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself a distant place.

If you aren't free of yourself how will you ever become yourself?

Tu Fu's wandering through the thousands of miles of ancestor peaks was always the Tao/Cosmos open to itself- ancestor wandering itself and gazing into itself; thinking itself and feeling itself, lamenting itself, and celebrating itself, writing poems about itself.

When you're a kid, and you first start reading grown-up books, it's like looking in a window at night at people who think no one is around.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell deadborn from the press.

The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…

Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy be still a man.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity.

Il est difficile de parler de soi longtemps sans vanité.

Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity. - My Own Life

When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.

When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calummy, and detraction, When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance (Hume, 1739, p.312)

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 312).

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 311-312).

Bleib' nüchtern und vergiss' nicht, skeptisch zu sein!