Quotes About Introspection

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves.

There's nothing wrong with self-improvement, as long as you recognize that at some point you're going to have to accept yourself in all your imperfect glory. What's wrong with liking yourself the way you are?

We read because we are essentially alone.

Once you've read too many trashy best-sellers, you begin to look for something with substance, something that attempts to define the universe.

If you are honest with yourself, your life will be so much more pleasant.

To work problems out for yourself, to find you own way out of ignorance, to know the pleasure of knowing - these things improve the quality of life. Unfashionable, even impractical, but true.

I cannot write about Venice; I can only write about me, and the sleeping parts of myself that Venice has shocked into wakefulness.

There are limits to self-improvement. Inevitably you hit the point where what you are is, well, what you are, and all the teach-yourself videos and easy-to-use equipment on those creatinous home TV shopping things can no longer ward off you confrontation with your self.

Know thyself is one of the fundamental commands that aim at human strength and happiness.

Today we take for granted that we are we. Yet the doubt about ourselves still exists, or has even grown.

The capacity to see and—equally so—blindness are not divisible. The critical faculty of the human mind is one: To believe one can be seeing internally but blind as far as the outside world is concerned is like saying that the light of a candle gives light only in one direction and not in all. The light of the candle is reason's capacity for critical, penetrating, uncovering thought.

O passo mais importante no aprendizado da concentração é aprender a ficar só consigo mesmo, sem ler, sem ouvir rádio, sem fumar, sem beber. Na verdade, ser capaz de concentrar-se significa ser capaz de ficar só consigo mesmo

Ako je psihoanaliza efikasna, to nije zato što pacijent prihvata nove teorije o razlozima svog nezadovoljstva, ve? zato što zahteva kapacitet za to da bude autenti?no zbunjen; on se ?udi otkri?u dela sebe, o ?ijem postojanju nije imao predstavu.

?ovek ?e tragati za uto?ištem u crkvi i religiji, jer ga njegova unutrašnja praznina nagoni da potraži neko sklonište. Me?utim, ispovedanje religije nije isto, što i biti religiozan.

Ich bin ein Schwein, murmelte Münzer und fing mit vorgeschobener Unterlippe die Tränen auf. Sie überschätzen sich, Verehrter, sagte der Handelsredakteur.

Wir werden nicht daran zugrunde gehen, dass einige Zeitgenossen besonders niederträchtig sind, und nicht daran, dass einigen von diesen und jenen mit einigen von denen identisch sind, die den Globus verwalten. Wir gehen an der seelischen Bequemlichkeit aller Beteiligten zugrunde. Wir wollen, dass es sich ändert, aber wir wollen nicht, dass wir uns ändern. Wozu sind die anderen da?, denkt jeder und wiegt sich im Schaukelstuhl.

Du bist noch krank, meinte Fabian Du hast sie noch lieb. Das ist wahr, sagte Labude. Aber ich bin schon mit ganz anderen Kerlen fertiggeworden als mit mir.

Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me. -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12

I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.

Nothing is the mirror in which you see the world.

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

Wir sind verlassen wie Kinder und erfahren wie alte Leute, wir sind roh und traurig und oberflächlich - ich glaube, wir sind verloren.

T]his is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like this. They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes that is it - they feel it, but always with only half of themselves, the rest of their being taken up by with other things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole essence;

Going away is not always so simple—when one takes oneself along.