Quotes About Introspection

She was tired of being afraid, so impossibly weary of her own fears that a part of her wanted to sit on the quite beach forever. If she sat in the sand forever,she wouldn't have to face the troubles that often seemed to define her life. As a tear descended her cheek, she wiped it away, turning toward the sea.

player hummed for a second, then sweet sad acoustic guitar filled the air, arpeggiated cascades that transformed the cramped space of the room. The voice that followed was smoky and haunting, filled with loss:

Of all the complexities of the ten thousand things, the self-consciousness of man is ten thousand times the most complex.

Upper lamp on lowest gain glowing down to white sheets and yellow hair and golden skin—so much gold for so little skin—and all of it, the gently rising flat tummy, the wide eyes closed or shielded or hidden, the positively dreamlike sweep of lines from throat to forehead and back again to the partial view of more yellow hair, but tufted, promising more hair and more gold . . . all of it glowing back up into the lamp, shaming it. Shaming me.

Don't make everyone know about your sadness.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.

And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.

There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers...

As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

They's times when how you feel got to be kep' to yourself.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. An all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for thy can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.

When you're a child you're the center of everything. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you're your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It's worse, but it's much better too.

Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know.

Well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin' books or thinkin' or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin', an' he got nothing to tell him what's so an' what ain't so. Maybe if he sees somethin', he don't know whether it's right or not. He can't turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can't tell. He got nothing to measure by.

I seem to know that there's a part of you missing. Some men can't see the color green, but they may never know they can't. I think you are only a part of a human. I can't do anything about that. But I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn't see it or feel it.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement. [ Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech ]

Show me the man who isn't interested in discussing himself.