Quotes About Introspection

Readers who wish to follow Whim rather than whim--readers who have learned enough about what he or she really thrives on to seek more of it--the first lesson must be in humility. . . . Don't waste time and mental energy in comparing yourself to others whether to your shame or gratification, since we are all wayfarers.

He who understands all but lacks Self Knowledge lacks all.

But for people like Erasmus (with his "cry of thankful joy" on spying a fragment of print) or Lynne Sharon Schwartz ("Can I get back to my books now?"), books are the natural and inevitable and permanent means of being absorbed in something other than the self.

when you know your Self you too shall be known! You'll be aware that you're the sons and daughters of our living Father. But if you fail to know your own Self you're in hardship and are that hardship.

I gave up Christianity at about fourteen. Came back to it when getting on for thirty. An almost purely philosophical conversion. I didn't want to. I'm not the religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master: but since the facts seemed to be the opposite I had to give in.

The more sober you get, the more clearly you feel

He had a problem, like any other problem. The problem just hadn't been well posed. The problem was: Should he leave Penny or not?

I would argue, however, that in most and perhaps all forms of creative activity, an unencumbered, unregimented, inward-looking mind is required at certain points—a mind that has unplugged from the wired world.

It is the celebration of privacy and solitude. It is the willingness to follow one's own thoughts. It is the indulgence of play and unscheduled time.

They draw strength from being alone while they create or explore new worlds. They need that aloneness. They have developed the habit of mind to accept and seek out that aloneness. Sometimes, they must push back against their society to get what they need.

Where are they now, as he sits at his bedside table, listening to the sound of his running bath, vaguely perceiving the change in the light.

I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.

Who imprisoned me here? Who keeps me here? Who can release me? Who's controlling and constraining my life except...me?

We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?

I thought as much. Miss Murray, though I am a beast, do not think that I am stupid. I know that I am hideous and hateful. I am not loved, nor ever hope to be. Nor am I fool enough to think that what I feel for you is love. But in this world, alone, I do not hate you. And alone in this world, you do not hate me.

It was Kovacs who said Mother then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again.

I am tired of this world, these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.

It's not God that kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.

There is more to life than the material world. The truth most painful to the heart is that which makes the spirit stronger. And it is the strength of the spirit that will be needed when the physical crisis is over.

I know every inch of this cell. This cell knows every inch of me. Except one.

Would age now swiftly overtake him? Would this terrible nodding last now for all his days, so that men said aloud in his presence, it is nothing, he is old and does nothing but forget? And would he nod as though he too were saying, Yes, it is nothing, I am old and do nothing but forget? But who would know that he said, I do nothing but remember?

Something in the humble voice must have touched Msimangu, for he said, I am not kind. I am a selfish and sinful man, but God put his hands on me, that is all.

And that next day, he was in the black mood, what we call the swartgalligheid, which is the black gall. And the heart is black too, and the world is black, and one can tell oneself that it will pass, but these are only words that one speaks to oneself, for while it is there it is no comfort that it will pass.