Quotes About Introspection

I can't kill myself, I thought. I'm too insignificant. I'm nothing. I'm a thumbprint on the first-floor window of a skyscraper, a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea along with millions of tons of raw sewage, a squirrel eating a nut as a car bore down on him.

I forced a swift smile, then turned back to my glass, salvation and sanctuary viniferously bundled into one.

I tapped a forefinger to my temple and raised my glass of single-vineyard Foxen Pinot. "Between here and here lies the Rubicon of the imagination.

He had retreated into a silent movie of his own making and I was watching from the anonymous remove of a theater seat. He was flickering, growing distant, fading like the '82 Latour.

More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse.-Nero Wolfe in "Blood Will Tell

With everybody. Lots of them don't know it. Most of them up here wouldn't say that word, nigger, but they've got that word in them. Everybody. It's in them buried somewhere, but it's not dead. Some of them don't know they've got it and they wouldn't believe it, but it's there. That's what I knew I'd have to face when I sat there on the bed last night and tried to decide what to do.

I do not ordinarily hunt for a cave in the middle of the biggest excitement and most intense action, but this seemed to hit me in a new spot or something, and anyhow there I was, trying to arrange my mind. Or maybe my feelings. All I knew was that something inside of me needed a little arranging.

Few of us have enough wisdom for justice, or enough leisure for humanity.

I made a note to quit trying to understand women and start trying to understand men.

I dropped the book on the table, stretched for a good yawn, went and opened the window and stood there looking down on the street long enough to let the sharp cold air make me feel like blankets and hopped for the hay.

The subconscious is not a grave; it's a cistern.

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts, Robert Browning.

I said it is vainglorious to reproach yourself for lack of omniscience. That is also true of omnipotence. Report in as you can.

What are you, a scientist, or an artist?" Wolfe was frowning at him. "If you please, Mr. Jarrett, no labels. Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.

She gave me a little smile, the dimples coming, and said, 'We don't really know ourselves, do we?' 'It depends,' I said. 'Some of us know too much, and some not enough.

In a moment Wolfe said gruffly, "It is faintly encouraging that you are aware that you were stupid.

It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself.

we are born with the power to hear, we must learn to listen. we are born with the power to see, we must learn to understand. we are born with the power to make mistakes, we must learn to accept and forgive

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

Almost all of my really good times have been silent but have had to end.

The way my life goes, I can't tell if there are pits in my cherries or cherries among my pits, philosophically speaking.

At some point you have to take responsibility for who you are and where you are and being able to listen to other points of view, whichever side of the tracks you're on.

When I was on my own in a hotel room in Romania, I had the imagination to keep myself occupied.

Do you want to live on the surface of your life? Or do you want to live deeply?