Quotes About Introspection

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.

My pure-white past did not so much atone for me as rather blacken my present all the more

Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.

If we could truly see ourselves the way others see us we'd disappear on the spot.

We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content.

In the sudden change that had come over her heart she no longer recognized herself

Vous ne le voyez pas, lorsqu'il baisse lentement les paupières, comme pour éteindre ses yeux.

Le había quedado, de los tiempos en los que soñaba con dedicarse a la literatura y se juntaba con poetas, una desesperación universal.

The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.

Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either. You often notice that sort of silence when someone has said something it ought not to—and everyone else holds its tongue and waits for the one who oughtn't to have said it is sorry.

She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years.

no le había quedado más remedio que hacerse una confesión: aún temblaba al ver pasar a Mouret, pero ahora sabía que no era de miedo.

Per un istante, temendo di svenire a quell'odore di donna che ritrovava più caldo, moltiplicato, sotto il soffitto basso, si sedette sul bordo del divano imbottito, tra le due finestre. Ma si rialzò immediatamente, tornò accanto alla toeletta, senza guardare più niente, gli occhi vacui, ripensando a un mazzo di tuberose che una volta era appassito nella sua stanza e l'aveva fatto quasi morire. Le tuberose, quando si decompongono, hanno un odore umano.

What is art, after all, if not simply giving out what you have inside you? Didn't it all boil down to sticking a female in front of you and painting her as you feel she is? - page35

Words failed him again; he began to stammer in his unsuccessful attempt to express the first vague stirrings of the future he could feel within himself. While he finished feverishly brushing in the black velvet jacket, there was a long silence. (37)

Grandes dolores de corazón y propósitos de la enmienda suelen quedarse entre las mantas.

Sentía un abatimiento grande, agujetas,cansancio, y al mismo tiempo una excitación, unas ganas de echar a andar, de huir de si misma, de no verse ni oirse!

I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.

He's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being.

I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words?

I take so little interest in my daily life, that I hardly remember to eat and drink.

You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering away your life on silly trifles.

I will walk where my own nature would be leading.