Quotes About Introspection

My unhappiness protects me from life.

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.

Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.

...I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes."...

And I found that I can do it if I choose to - I can stay awake and let the sorrows of the world tear me apart and then allow the joys to put me back together different from before but whole once again.

I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

In my old age, I have been thinking about this, and I have reached the conclusion that those who have physical courage also have moral courage.

This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?

I'm quite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman, imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That's been my approach, for the most part.

Find a victory in every defeat to remain hopeful and find a defeat in every victory to remain humble.

Many times in life, those who do the most correcting, need the most correcting.

Leaders begin with a different question than others. Replacing who can I blame with how am I responsible?

Successful people achieve because they think beforehand when it works & think afterwards when it doesn't work.

The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.

Don't you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?

Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.

Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

That man is intellectually of the mass who, in face of any problem, is satisfied with thinking the first thing he finds in his head. On the contrary, the excellent man is he who contemns what he finds in his mind without previous effort, and only accepts as worthy of him what is still far above him and what requires a further effort in order to be reached.

El ser es la balsa que el náufrago se construye con lo que le rodea... Tiene u caràcter puramente intrahumano, domestico. Fuera del hombre no hay ser porque aparece solo cuando se le busca.

Because man's being is made of strange stuff....

faithfully kept a Confucian-style diary of daily self-criticism.

What Socrates called the "unexamined life" that is "not worth living" now seems to be the life more people have slipped into than ever before.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. WILLIAM HAZLITT