Quotes About Introspection

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be the gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.

Flabby, bald, lobotomized,he drifted in a sheepish calm,where no agonizing reappraisaljarred his concentration on the electric chair—hanging like an oasis in his airof lost connections.

My mind's not right.A car radio bleats,"Love, O careless Love…. " I hearmy ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,as if my hand were at its throat….I myself am hell;nobody's here.

We are old-timers,each of us holds a locked razor.

It has taken me the time since you diedto discover you are as human as I am…if I am.

No ease for the boy at the keyhole, his telescope, when the women's white bodies flashed in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail. Nothing! No oil for the eye, nothing to pour on those waters or flames. I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil.

In it, he pushed the metric of typewriter spaces, and quoted from a poem, "The Catholic Bells," to show us Williams's "mature style at fifty"! This was a memorable phrase, and one that made maturity seem possible, but a long way off. I more or less memorized "The Catholic Bells," and spent months trying to console myself by detecting immaturities in whatever Williams had written before he was fifty.

After my marriage, I found myself in constant companionship with this almost stranger I found neither agreeable, interesting, nor admirable

I find that I fall into two parts which roughly correspond to instinct and conscience. To use a figure, I might characterize both parts as writers. Neither one, as far as the simple daily calls of life go, is much of a success.

Past fifty, we learn with surprise and a sense of suicidal absolution that what we intended and failed could never have happened— and must be done better.

I grow too merry, when I stand in my nakedness to dress.

Some morbidity in me attracts mosquitoes

We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.

I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?

It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.

Guys getting in shape before joining an exercise class was not unlike the thing women do when they clean up before the maid comes.

I remember sitting at the witness table listening to this litany of woe and thinking, What the hell am I doing here? I have walked right into the middle of a category-five shitstorm.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

His will was weakening; he recognised the signs.

Saint Anthony the Anchorite?