Quotes About Introspection

As Socrates said, "Know thyself." Cicero said, "Control thyself." And as Jesus taught, "Give thyself.

If you don't ask why, you'll never be attacked or criticized. No one is going to go after you or your family. But if you don't ask why, nothing, not a damn thing, is ever going to change. I think that's the difference between philanthropy and activism. Philanthropy is this kind of life-saving work. Activism is when you ask why this work needs to be done in the first place.

From his book "Was That Me? Turning Points in my Life." A quote from my father, "The easiest person to fool is yourself."

Il tenente Dumbar non era realmente inghiottito. Ma quella fu la prima parola che gli si fissò in mente. Tutto era immenso. Quel vasto cielo azzurro senza una nube. Quell'oceano d'erba che ondeggiava al vento. Null'altro, fino a dove riusciva a spingere lo sguardo. Non una pista, non una traccia di sochi lasciati da altre ruote che il carro potesse seguire. Solo lo spazio, assoluto e vuoto

The life of comparison is deadly. One is always more than or less than and it is based upon a brief proof which tends to be seen as emotional but is in fact bereft of emotion. Comparison is so subtle a force it exposes itself in the guise of emotion to protect its own cunning from being seen as the judgmental emphasis it is.

Think of the letters which have placed you nowhere, have given you something lonely, and the restraint of all anger at loneliness.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

She hadn't really known Box; it turned out perhaps she hadn't really known Vivian, either. Maybe nobody really knew anybody.

She'd spent enough time trying to read the tea leaves of his heart.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster," as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. "And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Walter

Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.

It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology.

What it must feel like to lie back with cut wrists in a warm bath, a voluptuous dwindling feeling.

It's lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We'd all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal.

He insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and profound than you suspect yourself to be--capable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imagined--it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through your essence, weighs your true qualities . . . and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has.

Solitude is the natural dwelling place of truth…It is there you will wrestle. It is there you will be tested by fire and by darkness.

Man projects his wounds upon the world, my friend. He judges everything, and in the judging he reveals himself.

Así se prueba a un hombre. Si es honesto, intelectualmente hablando, reexamina sus opiniones y comienza de nuevo.

You can't just sit there hating the wound, Tan, or indulging in bitterness. Whatever you become in life, always ask yourself, am I making more life or am I making more death?

I am not afraid of being unloved. But I am terrified of never learning to love. There,

As the years passed, Ethan noticed that he recognized fewer faces than he had at the beginning, and by the same token an increasing number of residents failed to recognize him. He had never wanted acknowledgment, and thus he was at ease with the changing situation, merely finding it interesting the way so many people now walked past him, or through him, it seemed, as if he were invisible. This was to his liking,

My mind is reeling.