Quotes About Introspection

Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.

A strong and bitter book-sickness floods one's soul. How ignominious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of paper, print, and dead men's sentiments!

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead -- and that one was myself.

Learning how to think' really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think," said the novelist David Foster Wallace in a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005.

gained. We shouldn't allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we've numbed an essential part of our self.

We are how we read.

true enlightenment comes only through contemplation and introspection.

Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater.

Like so many other would-be students of the mind, I had gone to sea to see the world, only to discover that all I was seeing was sea. Not even that: I was down below decks, studying the engine room of mental life, with no clear sense of where the ship was steering.

Remember, the point of doing this [personality inquiry] is not to pigeonhole yourself with a four-letter type but to get clear on important aspects of your makeup--your personal blueprint. Use this inquiry as a mirror to see yourself more clearly, Don't accept the results as truth. Use them to find clues,

After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time I was dissatisfied with romantic doom, yet didn't see much way around it.

one is creeping into middle age and is less easily distracted by one's appetites, which have grown feeble, and by one's passions, which seem such a bore - all but the consuming desire for knowledge and understanding. That grows. - Aldous Huxley

one is creeping into middle age and is less easily distracted by one's appetites, which have grown feebler, and by one's passions, which seems such a bore - all but the consuming desire for knowledge and understanding. That grows. - Aldous Huxley

I've been burdened by questions I've asked myself a thousand times since the last time we were together. Why did I do it? And would I do it again? It was I, you see, who ended it.

The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without: to follow one's own path, not that of the crowd.

all we ever see of each other is the representation we hold inside our own minds.

She rolls onto her back and looks up at the dark ceiling, at the tiny speck of orange light leaking through the curtains from the streetlamp outside, and she tries to decide. "Are

Anyone can talk,' she said, 'but the cleverest people spend their time listening.' And that really pleased me. It provided me with an identity, a sort of camouflage, so I could sit and listen to you all and not get noticed an not be judged for not saying anything.

don't we all have moments of madness?

Barbara ne pose pas de question. elle ne veut pas savoir ce qui s'est passé. Ce qu'elle sait, c'est que chacun ici reçoit son lot de malheurs et qu'il ne sert à rien de les partager, qu'en parler ne fait qu'alourdir le fardeau des autres. C'est une immense leçon de vie qu'elle n'oubliera jamais.

You have told me your history, but speak little fo teh present. Why's that - Sabine Strohem

her mother is asking her a question and she is forced to resurface from the sanctuary of daydream.

But she would always tell herself, Who needs friends, when you have books.

Who needs friends, when you have books,