Quotes About Introspection

I hated myself and the world because I had failed to face and accept the limitations of my self and of life. In literature this refusal is called romanticism; in psychology, neurosis.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we normally live our lives and we'd sort of like to find out what it is.

Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.

I am fat, lazy and kind.

Abuse counselors say of the abusive client: "When he looks at himself in the morning and sees his dirty face, he sets about washing the mirror.

One exercise that can help you address this trap involves making a list of all the ways, including emotional ones, in which you feel dependent on your partner, then making another list of big or small steps you might take to begin to become more independent. These lists can guide you in focusing your energy in the directions you need to go.

Pointing fingers at other countries can be a way to ignore the serious problems in our own.

Esto es lo que me pasó a mí. Pensé que tenía normas. Yo creía en mis absolutos. Lo hice para la mayoría de las situaciones. Entonces no lo hice. Conforme pasó el tiempo, mi mundo se volvió gris y mis absolutos se oscurecieron. El bien y el mal se disolvieron en lo que sabía que tenía que hacer.

For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

The clear light of science teaches us that we must be our own saviors, if we are to be found worth saving.

Silence is a profound teacher and a hard taskmaster. Learn her art when it is offered; there is much to hear within her temple!

deito-me para sofrer menos, refugiada nas lembranças para não ter de tomar decisões na vida, mergulhar no passado para não enfrentar o futuro. Ou para entender o presente? É tão vazio o meu presente. O conflito, por menor que seja, hoje em dia desgasta-me demasiado. Prefiro vegetar.

Os meus olhos deviam ter a mesma expressão nos últimos anos, mas nunca notei. Bem que me olhava no espelho para ver que cara a pessoa tem quando sofre muito, mas era sempre o meu rosto. Cada vez mais achava que devia ter mudado muito, não se podia ser a mesma depois de tanta coisa, de tanta dor. Contudo, era eu.

We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility. ... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.

If we center our thoughts and activities on ourselves, our world grows increasingly narrow, and over time our view of reality is warped. Without realizing it, we become the measure of all things in our own minds.

What we focus on defines us, so if our focus is inward, on ourselves, we wind up defining for ourselves whether we are righteous or guilty. When we begin and end with us—with our self— we miss the heart of the gospel and never truly find the freedom for which we ache.

Novels hadn't interested her for a long time now: not for a moment could she tear her mind away from her own life and concentrate on somebody else.

How strange it is to realize now that although I was frightened of the emptiness between us, that emptiness was not his fault but mine: I was waiting to see what he would give me, how he would entertain me. And yet I was incapable of being profoundly interested in him or, maybe, in anyone. Just the reverse of what I thought at the time, when it seemed so simple: he was too callow, or too cautious, or just too young, not complex enough yet, and so he did not entertain me, and it was his fault.

His inconsistency. His inability to finish anything. His sudden terrifying feelings that nothing he did mattered. His realizations that what went on in the outside world had more substance than anything in his life.

I said I would write one letter every day after the mail came. But I did not do that for long. I did not answer most of the letters that came to me. I would plan to walk south in the early part of the afternoon, so as to get a little sun on my face. But I did not do that for long. Although I liked the idea of a rigid order, and seemed to believe that a thing would have more value if it was part of an order, I quickly became tired of the order.

Maybe I had been alone in that apartment so much by then that I had retreated into some kind of inner, unsociable space that was hard to come out of. Maybe I felt I had disappeared and I was comfortable that way and did not want to be forced back into existence. I don't know.

Maybe for now I should try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

because she couldn't write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn

I was tired of so much thinking, which was what I did most in those days. I did other things, but I went on thinking while I did them. I might feel something, but I would think about what I was feeling at the same time. I even had to think about what I was thinking and wonder why I was thinking it.