Quotes About Introspection

In reality, every reader, as he reads, is the reader of himself. The work of the writer is only a sort of optic instrument which he offers to the reader so that he may discern in the book what he would probably not have seen in himself.

If Albertine's lips were closed, her eyelids, on the other hand, seen from the point at which I was standing, seemed so loosely joined that I might almost have questioned whether she really was asleep. At the same time those drooping lids introduced into her face that perfect continuity, unbroken by any intrusion of eyes. There are people whose faces assume a quite unusual beauty and majesty the moment they cease to look out of their eyes

He knew himself so little that he doubtless imagined that he was in love with her, perhaps indeed that he would be in love with her always

Admirava a impotência do espírito, do raciocínio e do coração em operarem a mínima conversão, em resolverem uma só dessas dificuldades, que em seguida a vida, sem que se saiba ao menos como o fez, tão facilmente soluciona.

Those who produce works of genius are not those who spend their days in the most refined company, whose conversation is the most brilliant, or whose culture is the broadest; they are those who have the ability to stop living for themselves and make a mirror of their personality, so that their lives, however nondescript they may be socially, or even in a way intellectually, are reflected in it. For genius lies in reflective power, and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies in the answer.

Là comme partout, je connais tout le monde et je ne connais personne; beaucoup les choses et fort peu les personnes. Mais les choses elles-mêmes y semblent des personnes, des personnes rares, d'une essence délicate et que la vie aurait déçue.

Y, desde luego, eso no quiere decir que, cuando el Sr.Legranin echaba pestes contra los esnobs, no fuese sincero. No podía saber, al menos por sí mismo, que él sí lo era, pues nunca conocemos sino las pasiones de los demás y lo que llegamos a saber de las nuestras sólo a ellos se lo debemos

all those individuals who are better at analyzing than at valuing themselves.

When I talked with any one of my friends I was conscious that the original, the unique portrait of her individuality had been skilfully traced, tyranically imposed on my mind as much by the inflexions of her voice as by those of her face, and that these were two separate spectacles which rendered, each in its own plane, the same single reality.

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of a spiritual life. It can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it.

It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind.

je cherche encore mon chemin, je tourne une rue… mais… c'est dans mon cœur…

but other people, as we get to know them, are like a metal dipped in an acid bath, and we see them gradually lose their good qualities (and their bad qualities too, at times).

there is always less egoism in pure imagination than in recollection;

There are some faces which take on an unaccustomed beauty and majesty the moment they no longer have a gaze.

for as the dead exist only in us, it is ourselves that we strike without ceasing when we persist in recalling the blows that we have dealt them.

whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.

And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?

Il devient dangereux au contraire quand, au lieu de nous éveiller à la vie personnelle de l'esprit, la lecture tend à se substituer à elle, quand la vérité ne nous apparaît plus comme un idéal que nous ne pouvons réaliser que par le progrès intime de notre pensée et par l'effort de notre cœur...

Per vaim rectam,

She remembered all the years in which my grandmother and she had refrained from speaking to me about my work and the need for a healthier way of life which, I used to say, the agitation into which their exhortations threw me alone prevented me from beginning, and which, notwithstanding their obedient silence, I had failed to pursue.

Reading is at the threshold of our inner life; it can lead us into that life but cannot constitute it.

When the compartments in which we live parts of our lives are too different from one another, we can expend ourselves on a person who, by the following day, may come to seem uninteresting. But we feel responsible for what we may have said the night before, and wish to honor it.