Quotes About Introspection

Change in society is of secondary importance; that will come about naturally, inevitably, when you as a human being bring about the change in yourself.

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

You are only afriad if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

You want society to accept you; but you can't even accept yourself.

Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

I am an observer of life, a non-participant who takes no sides. I am in the regimented society, but not of it.

It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

You have to reform yourself before reforming society and the world.

Poetry, in the past, was the center of our society, but with modernity it has retreated to the outskirts. I think the exile of poetry is also the exile of the best of humankind.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.

Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

Ich habe mich oft gefragt, ob wir die anderen sehen können, wie sie wirklich sind, ob wir sie je erkennen oder nur das in ihnen sehen dürfen, was sie selbst auch zulassen.

alles wäre sauber und still, leer und kinderlärmfrei gewesen. Aber willst du mit vierzig, mit fünfzig noch so leben? hat Simon gefragt, und ich habe nichts geantwortet. Ja, vielleicht will ich.

I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something, till I realized the person I was waiting for was myself.