Quotes About Introspection

Who is this Judas? Who is the betrayer? Faced with this question, are we capable of more than asking with the disciples: "Surely not I, Lord?"8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, sermon in Finkenwalde, 14 March 1937

By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.

Constantly check your actions and intentions against each verse of this text, one by one, and any practice you engage in will progress and bear fruit with the greatest of ease. Permeate your mind with these teachings day by day, month by month, and without difficulty you will naturally awaken and develop within you all the qualities of a bodhisattva, just as a bee flying from flower to flower sips nectar from each, and from that nectar produces honey.

Atheism is not a matter of the mind; it is a matter of the heart.

Sometimes you are the answer to your own prayer.

It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one place and life to the next. We try to do the best we can. There are moments like this, however, when we are neither coming nor going, and all we have to do is sit and look back on the life we have made.

There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little light, and walk the same streets day after day. We spend our afternoons gazing lazily out of windows. Somnambulists, all of us. Someone else said it better: we wake to sleep and sleep to wake.

Che triste sbaglio, pensò Drogo, forse tutto è così, crediamo che attorno ci siano creature simili a noi e invece non c'è che gelo, pietre che parlano una lingua straniera, stiamo per salutare l'amico ma il braccio ricade inerte, il sorriso si spegne, perché ci accorgiamo di essere completamente soli. [Il deserto dei Tartari]

Ä°nsan?n, tek ba??na olduÄŸu ve hiç kimseyle konuÅŸmad??? zaman bir ÅŸeye inanmas? çok zordur.

One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence. Moreover, that in that does happiness consist.

We all know that, when caught off our guard, there comes a dark temptation from the depths of our lower selves, something atavistic stirs, and we think thoughts, or even do deeds, of which we would never have believed ourselves capable.

More tears began to flow, but tears of rage this time. Mona was furious with herself, with Hugh, but above all, with Jelkes, whom she recognised as acting as a kind of conscience to the pair of them.

There was a time in the marriage when I could no longer look at myself in a mirror, couldn't feel I was a nice person. A bad relationship can do that, can make you doubt everything good you ever felt about yourself.

My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.

It helps to be able to be alone. 'Cuz writing is done alone, unless you collaborate, but I don't do that. Ask my ex-wife.

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?

Have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?

And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough -- you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me -- be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.

now I see that night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep.

He knew at the same time that this stricture of acceptance (by which what we must love is made into what we can love) would eventually be a part of himself

The woman who presents herself to the spectator as a "picture" forever arranged is, for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger.

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?