Quotes About Introspection

Cause nobody's the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves - except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

Know thyself, for in thyself is to be found all that there is to be known," is still the rule for the wise student. If each one of us would scientifically regard ourselves as centres of force, holding the matter of our bodies within our radius of control, and thus working through and in them, we should have a hypothesis whereby the entire cosmic scheme could be interpreted.

the little death. What would or could be left of a human being after such an experience?

you know, one never realises how much one has changed with the years. We carry an inward image of ourselves, I think, which remains forever the same.

Polly was always shocked to learn how complacent she was, when she was certain of her good intentions.

She read Housekeeping, which Heidi loved because the odd people were the good people; The Handmaid's Tale, which she understood was terrifying even if the details were fuzzy; Giovanni's Room, which made her sigh, because people were so stubborn; The Professor's House, which she loved for the spooky dress form and Tom's trip to the old Southwest; and Anywhere But Here, which was Maud's favorite, because it starred a girl.

Silence is so steadfast, you know. It is so ample, after all.

Because life's too short to blush, I keep my blood tucked in.

When will women begin to have the first glimmer that above all other loyalties is the loyalty to Truth, i.e., to yourself, that husband, children, friends and country are as nothing to that?

Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by-the-way?

How sick one gets of being 'good ' how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours embody selfishness.

If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich...

I was born bad and I never have recovered.

Beauvoir was untouched by the criticisms; her diary was a record of one consciousness, her own: "This is what I saw and how I saw it. I have not tried to say more.

Nous nous sommes dévoilés.

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue

His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.

They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.

I'll never know how to live, will you?

And maybe you can't know me now. Maybe I'm just blood. Whatever that's for.