Quotes About Introspection

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.

Joseph stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked upward, waiting for her to reappear. He felt a desire to open his body for her inspection, so that she could see all the hidden things in him, even the things he did not know were there. That would be right, he thought. Then she would know the kind of man I am; and if she knew that she would be a part of me.

Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly.

When you're a child you're the centre of everything. Everything happens for you. 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.

I think he didn't like himself, and when that is so the subject usually must find an area for dislike outside himself.

He saw the world through gray water.

They knew that a man so hurt and so perplexed may turn in anger, even on people he loves. They left the men alone to figure and to wonder in the dust. After

laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death

Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors in a man.

I don't know whether I can accept things or not, Lee said I've never had a chance to try. I've always found myself with some - not less uncertain but less able to take care of uncertainty. I've had to do my weeping - alone.

I wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.

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

Oh, I guess I'm physically able to father a child. That's not what I'm thinking. I'm too closely married to a quiet reading lamp.

I've heard two ways of looking at it. One says the silent man is the wise man & the other that a man without words is a man without thought. Naturally I favor the second! ~ East of Eden

Git, Ma said. They's times when how you feel got to be kep' to yourself.

See. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.

When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out it discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.

From start to finish I found no strangers. If I had, I might be able to report them more objectively. But these are my people and this my country. If I found matters to criticize and to deplore, they were tendencies equally present in myself.

It's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.

Noah the first-born, tall and strange, walking always with a wondering look on his face, calm and puzzled. He had never been angry in his life. He looked in wonder at angry people, wonder and uneasiness, as normal people look at the insane.

I wonder about people who say they haven't time to think. [...] Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.

You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror. But that's not the worst. We think everybody is seeing into us. Then dirt is very dirty and purity is shining white. Aron, it will be over. Wait only a little while and it will be over.

It's like me, I wouldn' take the good ol' gospel that was just layin' there to my hand. I got to be pickin' at it until I got it all tore down.

I believe that there is only one story in the world... Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hunger and ambitions in their avarice and cruelty and in their kindness and generosity too-- in a net of good and evil. A man after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or ill?