Quotes About Introspection

When we are young, we make gods and goddesses of one another, then we soon come to realize that we are all merely human and imperfect.

Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.

It seems like all the time people are making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true visions when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.

You know...it's like you live your life opening doors. One after the other. You open a door onto a hallway, which leads to another door, which leads to another hallway. But then one day you open a door and it's to a closet. It doesn't go anywhere.

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.

You are where I unlock myself, where I say that I have often put down my wooden spoon to stare out the kitchen window to see the men I thought were magic for their story-telling or their way of walking, or the ones I was so strongly sexually attracted to, even though they weren't good people - at least not for me.

I see where all this success has led me. Now I want to see what it's kept me from.

But you know what usually happens when you take a vacation to a place that galvanizes you and makes you feel like you're going to change your life. You come home and get right back into your old habits. Meanwhile, a slow fire burns. A

I go up to my room, close the door and sit on my bed, my hands clasped in my lap, and in my chest is a raggedy sadness. Outside, the sun hangs at the horizon, then drops. Day is done. (page 60)

A human being writes the book, but what writes for him or her is more spirit than physical being, and that spirit lives only in solitude.

It's all broken glass inside me, she once wrote in her journal, when she was in high school. I breathe, and I cut myself.

I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self. I need to unload my head and look at what I've got in there so far. See it. Think what it means. I always need to come back to being alone for awhile.

He says the only way to know yourself is to challenge yourself - in a hard way, so that you're really scared. He says what you do in times like that is what you are.

Or he could go back to the ease of solitude. It's really not so bad, being alone, never worrying about what has to be done for, or with, or in the interest of another. it's like you let your mind stay in its pajamas all day.

when you are aware you are dying, the path narrows, and there is room eventually for only one person—you, not distracted by anything else and therefore able to see all that couldn't be seen before. And that this can be such a great gift that you shiver inside at the taking of it.

I don't think you've even begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone, and here's what I know about you: You have so much love to give! But I feel like you're all the time digging in the tomato bin, saying 'Where are the apples?

I wanted to keep it as small as possible, so that it would go away sooner. I needed to keep it to myself.

We are meant to use what we have, whatever it is. We are meant to be less mindful of our insides, more outwardly directed.

I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.

If I were her? First thing I'd do is torch my little black book and start over again. Because the men that woman attracts are just plain odd.

But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say Oh look! Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

You could see that her tremendous inside life, its solitary fears and fires, was out of accord with her humble view of herself; to hide or excuse what she felt was her first wish.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.