Quotes About Introspection

It is as if we need to be reminded of convention in order properly to appreciate the wonder of being unguarded...

We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.

The freedom to think involves the courage to stumble upon our demons.

Ideally, art would give us the answers that other people don't. This might even be one of the main points of literature: to tell us what society at large is too prudish to explore. The important books should be those that leave us wondering, with relief and gratitude, how the author could possibly have known so much about our lives.

It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved

We feel guilty for all that we have not yet read, but overlook how much better read we already are than Augustine or Dante, thereby ignoring that our problem lies squarely with our manner of absorption rather than with the extent of our consumption.

So, in what ways are you mad?

There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood, or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone.

Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape...

Un paradox al c?rÈ›ilor scrise de alÈ›i oameni este c? ele ne spun adesea mai multe despre propria noastr? via?? decât am fost în stare s? înÈ›elegem singuri.

As David lifted a suitcase onto the conveyor belt, he came to an unexpected and troubling realisation: that he was bringing himself with him on his holiday. Whatever the qualities of the Dimitra Residence, they were going to be critically undermined by the fact that he would be in the villa as well.

One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with

Such intimate communion between our own life and the novels we read may be why Proust argued: In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. the writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.

We need panels of gold and lapis, windows of coloured glass and gardens of immaculately raked gravel in order to stay true to the sincerest parts of ourselves.

Being alone spares you from constant reminders of how difficult and strange you are. No one is there to hold a mirror up – record your antics and constantly make you accountable for them. If you're lucky, you will be able to tolerate and even like yourself.

Does beuty give birth to love? Or does love give birth to beauty? Did I love Chloe because she was beautiful? Or was she beautiful because I loved her?

Our vulnerability insults our self-conception; we are in pain and at the same time offended that we could so easily be so.

Sá»± th?t là khi chúng ta lá»›n lên, ta gi?t t?t c? nh?ng ng??i yêu thÆ°Æ¡ng ta b?ng m?i quan tâm ta dành cho h?, b?ng tình âu y?m ??y b?t an mà ta khÆ¡i g?i và không ng?ng khu?y Ä'á»™ng trong lòng h?. (Proust)

A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character

But the museum is only a prelude to a life well lived.

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestice setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.

If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn't begun.

I suffer, therefore I am special. I am not understood, but for precisely that reason, I am worthy of greater understanding. 13.

Episodes of unrequited love force us to develop a sense of humour about ourselves. It is impossible to think too well of who we are in their aftermath. Unrequited love edges us inevitably towards a basic humility. We are at last confirmed as truly ridiculous.