Quotes About Introspection

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.

I myself am more divine than any I see.

Man tells his aspiration in his God but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

beings, likely to be left alone, need to be fortified and furnished within themselves, and educationand thought have tended more and more to regard these beings as related to absolute being ...

Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself

In my experience, there are two things that no one will admit to: having no sense of humor and being susceptible to flattery.

Some people talk because they think sound is more manageable than silence.

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to see mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.

Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart," Rilke wrote, advising a young poet, "and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue.… Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.… [T]his is what you must work on however you can and not waste too much time and too much energy on clarifying your attitude to other people."9

It's been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.

She sat still, trying to hush her secret heart.

Look ahead into the past, and back into the future, until the silence.

What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside.

It would be nice if we were different people but we are not different people. We are ourselves and we are sure as hell not going to undergo some total transformation at this point.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.

You have a low opinion of yourself, Helen." "I wasn't born with it." "Where did you get it?" 'The story" she said, "is too long to tell, and too dull to listen to.

The two women looked at each other as if through the periscopes of enemy submarines across a fathomless and crawling sea.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, my mind a jumble. So much for breaking it off gently, I thought. The humor helped my mind clear, but I couldn't laugh. What would happen next?

time-out here on the edge of ourselves.

Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits for they become your character. And watch your character for it becomes your destiny. What we think, we become. My father always said that... and I think I am fine.

Watch your thoughts, for they will become actions. Watch your actions, for they'll become... habits. Watch your habits for they will forge your character. Watch your character, for it will make your destiny.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

When a man meets catastrophe on the road, he looks in his purse, but a woman looks in her mirror.