Quotes About Introspection

make for yourself at least a little corner, somewhere in the great world, where you may unbosom and be kind.

If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one.

You can put anything into words, except your own life

Being alone is the only possible condition for me, since I don't want to make a woman unhappy, and women have a tendency to become unhappy. Being alone isn't always fun, you can't always be in form. Moreover, I have learned from experience that once you are not in form women don't remain in form either; as soon as they are bored they start complaining you've no feeling.

If you're a hermit, nothing ever happens in your life," he said. "If you're the opposite of a hermit, things happen.

we should turn our most unsparing criticism toward ourselves. None is so perfect that there is no room for improvement.

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.

Where silence is, man is observed by silence. Silence looks at man more than man looks at silence. Man does not put silence to the test; silence puts man to the test.

The people is dead! Good-day, Self!

it is only through the 'flesh' that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly

It is entirely correct and completely in order to say, "You can't do anything with philosophy." The only mistake is to believe that with this, the judgment concerning philosophy is at an end. For a little epilogue arises in the form of a counter-question: even if we can't do anything with it, may not philosophy in the end do something with us, provided that we engage ourselves with it?

It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.)

We live in a world of shadows ... we are not what we are, but what is said of us and what we read in others' eyes.

If you make friends with yourself, you'll never be alone.

No man is hurt but by himself," said Diogenes.

Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day when you can be alone and undisturbed. Relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Now close your eyes and exercise your imagination.

Our aim is to find the real self, and to bring our mental images of ourselves more in line with the objects represented by our goals.

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best -- out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

My facea negative in the slatewindow,I sitin a litcorridor that racesthrough a darkone.Riding the "A" [1963]

I make a mental note to befriend some boring people.