Quotes About Introspection

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

self: "This is how I felt." Before long, this leads to incredibly convoluted psychoanalysis in a futile effort to justify the most banal, superficial

talking about what people ought to do, instead of giving some kind of lead in condemning what they are actually doing.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you?

Keep looking. I'd love to be able to start over again fresh. I'd love to look in that other person's face and see nothing but a clear reflection. Maybe this time I'd be more careful not to damage it.

There are times when I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they're not around. There's also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one's own life is experiencing sensations that no one else can share. You take a step in a house, you start moving around the house, no one else moves with you. You're walking by yourself.

The fear of being vulnerable prompts me into bringing myself forward.

There comes a point in every man's life when he sees that the magician's hat is empty, that the government and the church are run by fools, and that virtue is far rarer than he'd been led to believe.

Teach your tongue to say 'I don't know.

We hear nothing so clearly as what comes out of silence.

The bad thing about falling into pieces is that it hurts. The good thing about it is that once you're lying there in shards you've got nothing left to protect, and so have no reason not to be honest

I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.

I'll just quote myself for now; actually, I'll quote what a good friend of mine, David Jenkins responded to a post I made when I was feeling 'pissy.' "Deep thoughts (come) from a deep well. Society is useful because when we see ourselves reflected through others we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves." ~ David Jenkins, 2013

A key test for any society is whether or not it is self-correcting. And to be self-correcting, it must first be open and truthful about itself.

Abba Antony said, "Whatever you find in your heart to do in following God, that do, and remain within yourself in Him.

We can ask ourselves each day, how has my "inner person" been given the opportunity to speak and act today?

I guess the real question is, Why not me? Why did I think I was going to get through this life without sorrow, pain, or grief?

had no conviction. I had no foundation. My game changed from day to day, lesson to lesson. It seemed I had been looking everywhere but within. I thought about

Every man has a cemetery inside him. You don't know how big yours is until you dig in it.

He says, for example, that "the snowy Alps were visible in the distance from the camp, but no one was able to muster it within himself to give any thought to how beautiful they really are; this can only be done by one who is able to look at the world with the eyes of a man, not a slave." Majdanski

Reading (...) is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.

Reading is, by its nature, a strategy for displacement, for pulling back from the circumstances of the present and immersing in the textures of a different life.

Reading is a form of self-identification that works, paradoxically, by encouraging us to identify with others, an abstract process that changes us in the most concrete of ways.

Faria Kazi heard them and thought of