Quotes About Introspection

Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around

The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive.

I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.

As a young man, I was unlike McCandless in many important regards; most notably, I possessed neither his intellect nor his lofty ideals. But I believe we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with out fathers. And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul.

but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude….

But some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.

We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.

A lot of us are like that—I'm like that, Ed Abbey was like that, and it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.

brooding on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs

Lo que quiero decir es que no necesitas tener a alguien contigo para traer una nueva luz a tu vida. Está ahí fuera, sencillamente, esperando que la agarres, y todo lo que tienes que hacer es el gesto de alcanzarla. Tu único enemigo eres tú mismo y esa terquedad que te impide cambiar las circunstancias en que vives.

Like being free to think for yourself.

He was alone," as James Joyce wrote of Stephen Dedalus, his artist as a young man. "He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.

But as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., once said, "Righteousness is easy, also cheap, in retrospect." When we condemn posterity for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us?

that no trumpets could totally drown out the uncertain notes of the boy who doubted his place in the world.

When the word moderation becomes a dirty word we have some soul searching to do.

For the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself (And even that approximation may be giving faith too much of a headstart).

In judging of others, let us always think the best, and employ the spirit of charity and candor. But in judging of ourselves, we ought to be exact and severe.

I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders," I thought. I opened the manual again. And I instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones.

If anyone should change their behaviour, I thought, it ought to be those doing the shaming.

if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.

I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres.

He had experienced only kindness and forgiveness. Actually, it wasn't kindness and forgiveness. It was something much better than that. It was nothing. He experienced nothing.

That's what I Am a Strange Loop is about," said Deborah. "It's about how we spend our lives self-referencing, over and over, in a kind of strange loop.

I thought about my own over-anxious brain, my own sort of madness. Was it a more powerful engine in my life than my rationality?