Quotes About Introspection

I should like to see any man's biography with corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don't know each other's secrets quite so well as we flatter ourselves we do. We don't always know our own secrets as well as we might.

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.

En estas ocasiones, creo sinceramente que lo mejor es tragarse una cápsula de dinamita y encender, con toda tranquilidad, un cigarrillo.

Cansado, sobre todo, de estar siempre conmigo, de hallarme cada día, cuando termina el sueño, allí, donde me encuentre, con las mismas narices y con las mismas piernas...

Nos olvidamos, a veces, de nuestra sombra o es que nuestra sombra nos abandona de vez en cuando?

y vuelta y vuelta a tanta terca tuerca para entregarse entero o de tres cuartos harto ya de mitades y de cuartos al entrevero exhausto de los lechos deshechos o darse noche y día sin descanso contra todos los nervios del misterio del más allá de acá

Y sacaréme la niebla el turbio zumo oscuro del traspienso la pulpa la soborra de mente toda su gris resaca me sacaré hasta el meollo antes de que se asiente la áspera espera arena que taté teté yo y lamí y tragué yo en la sed a trago tardo largo lo hueco lo plenamente hueco y que no es más que hueco pero crece

The Pringles had been married less than a week. Though she would have claimed to know about him everything there was to be known, she was now beginning to wonder if she really knew anything.

Out in the street again, Harriet attempted philosophy: 'Wherever one is,' she said, 'the only thing certain is that nothing is certain.

Every man will speak as he thinks, or, more properly, without thinking, and consequently will judge the effects without attending to the causes.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.

The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

Kawajiri Hogin classifies those who sit for wrong reasons as: 1) those who sit in order to tranquilize their minds; 2) those who sit to be empty in their minds; 3) those who solve koan as if they were guessing games; 4) those who start sitting, motivated by their wish for escape from this disturbing world.

think that the essential point of Zen lies in "proof," which is variously called "right awareness of no-self," "seeing one's original self-nature," and so on.

Sanzen is classified into sosan (mandatory interviews for those with koan) and dokusan (individual interviews).

Thinking that a koan is something to be thought about and solved objectively is out of keeping with Zen teachings.

Some of you may practice zazen all alone at home with this book of mine as a guide. If you do, you must be well prepared for suffering. If there is no suffering, your sitting will be futile and you will find it difficult to continue zazen.

Seeing one's true self-nature in itself is samadhi, and samadhi in itself is seeing one's true self-nature.

The word "doubt" may be interpreted as "becoming the object of doubt itself.

When my desire grows too fierce I wear my bed clothes inside out, dark as the night's rough husk.

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.

You get to know who you really are in a crisis.

The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is.

Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.