Quotes About Introspection

If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? 'If s/he really is so wonderful, how could s/he could love someone like me?' 2.

I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it's more or less irrelevant to me that they're intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere, etc.

A genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

A book is the product of another self to the one we display in our habits, in society, in our vices.

What we colloquially call 'feeling bored' is just the mind, acting out of a self-preserving reflex, ejecting information it has despaired of knowing where to place.

for a time we are relieved of our preoccupations and placed in a wider context that stills the incessant complaints of our egos.

The happiness which may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception, it reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

we will have nothing substantial to offer anyone else so long as we have not first mastered the art of being patient midwives to our own thoughts.

It is the task of philosophy to let you down gently.

The trick is perhaps not to start a new life but to learn to reconsider the old one with less jaded and habituated eyes.

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

You don't put your life into books. You find it there.

But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all.

I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since.

Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of all purpose.

To read is to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it', said Sir Kevin, 'if the pursuit itself were less … selfish.

When he dipped his cake in his tea - a disgusting business - the whole of his life came back to him. When I did it nothing happened.

A few years ago she never would have noticed what Norman was doing. Or anyone else either. And if she took note of it now it was because she knew more of people's feelings than she used it. And could put herself in someone else's place.

You don't put your life into your books. You find it there.

L'attrattiva della letteratura, rifletté, consisteva nella sua indifferenza, nella sua totale mancanza di deferenza. I libri se ne infischiavano di chi li leggeva; se nessuno li apriva, loro stavano bene lo stesso. Un lettore valeva l'altro e lei non faceva eccezione.

Leggere vuol dire sottrarsi. Rendersi irreperibili. Sarebbe già diverso» disse Sir Kevin «se come passatempo fosse meno… egoistico». «Egoistico?». «Forse dovrei dire solipsistico». «E allora lo dica». Al che Sir Kevin si lanciò. «Se potessimo veicolare le sue letture per uno scopo più ampio: acculturare il paese, ad esempio, per promuovere la lettura fra i giovani.

Books are wonderful, aren't they? … At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak, they tenderize one. … he concurred again, but had no notion what she was on about.

Forse, disse a Norman, leggo perché sento di dover indagare la natura degli esseri umani.

If reading softens one up, writing does the reverse. You have to be tough, do you not?