Quotes About Introspection

When I am listening, it is not necessary that I have an auditory perception of the articulated sounds but that the conversation pronounces itself within me. It summons me and grips me; it envelops and inhabits me to the point that I cannot tell what comes from me and what from it. Whether speaking or listening, I project myself into the other person, I introduce him into my own self.

Prior to stimuli and sensory contents, we must recognize a kind of inner diaphragm which determines, infinitely more than they do, what our reflexes and perceptions will be able to aim at in the world, the area of our possible operations, the scope of our life.

Remember that you cannot work on yourself unless you begin to wonder why you say what you say and do what you do and behave as you behave and feel what you feel and think what you think. To take yourself for granted, to imagine you are always right, to ascribe to yourself all that you do ascribe to yourself—all that form of sheer imagination will prevent you from seeing what esotericism means, what the Gospels mean, and what you mean.

Man must realize his mechanicalness before he can change... Work is a question of increasing one's consciousness, not imitating virtues like monkeys.

Whoever we are, we find ourselves, through self-observation, possessed of a certain small number of typical ways of reacting to the manifold impressions of incoming life. These mechanical reactions govern us.

When a man pities himself, he feels he is owed—like the dog. If you feel that you are owed, you will never begin truly to work on yourself.

To change one's life is not to change outer circumstances: it is to change one's reactions.

The movement of this Work is psychologically inwards, at first. Later it is both inwards and outwards.

Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?

As a kid, all I thought about was death.

As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.

I learn something from criticism because when it comes from sources you respect you always examine it and learn.

En el silencio mandan los ruidos.

Inside my head, I shit my pants.

People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

Only the insane take themselves seriously.

over and over, you would like to be recognized according to your own self, your own person, your own heart's inclination-but they always ask only what you have done, and really, if you look at it rationally, they have nothing else by which they can judge your state of mind except the manifestations of that state of mind.

Ich muß gestehen, daß ich zuerst den Eindruck hatte, unter Verrückte gefallen zu sein.

They didn't break me. I broke myself.

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.