Quotes About Introspection

When I hear girls I know longing to be what they call liberated, and when I hear others rejoicing in what they think of as liberation, I feel a fool, because I simply do not know where I stand. (Maria Magdalena Theotoky)

Myself: But wasn't the decision a right one? Am I not here? What more could Feeling have achieved than was brought about by Reason?

If Francis has really made up his soul [...], what lies ahead of him? Hasn't he achieved the great end of life? —[...] Having got his soul under his eye, so to speak, Francis must now begin to understand it and be worthy of it [...]. Making up a soul isn't an end; it's the new beginning in the middle of life.

Are you going to be just kind of a walking monument to a job, or are you going to have some kind of really significant inner life of your own? Because the external things — the job, the house, the this, the that — do not really fill the place inside.

I have been very miserable since - miserable not for an hour but for months on end - but I can still feel that hour's misery in its perfect desolation, if I am fool enough to call it up in my mind.

Unhappiness of the kind that is recognized and examined and brooded over is a spiritual luxury.

You remember the little poem by Ibsen that I quoted to you during one of our early meetings? MYSELF: Only vaguely. Something about self-judgement. DR. VON HALLER: No, no; self-judgement comes later. Now pay attention, please: To live is to battle with trolls in the vaults of heart and brain. To write: that is to sit in judgement over one's self.

Our focus must be on what we need to change about ourselves-our attitudes, our words, our actions-even if our circumstances and the other people in our lives remain the same.

The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

it goes something like 'There are a lot of ways to be yourself.

I am hurt...in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hands and eyes and breath are a part of me.

It is that I cannot see what I am doing or why, and it is unsettling always to live only in the moment as it passes. Oh, I know one never sees ahead or behind. But I see even less. It is like being blindfolded when everyone else in the room is not. No one can see outside the room – but everyone else can see the room. I would like to take my blindfold off.

You did not disturb me, said the pegasus. I disturbed myself, that I might speak to you.

It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind. It had never occurred to me that leaving someone alone could harden into a habit that could become a barrier.

In fact, she would have added the rider that she wasn't sure it could be done at all, getting to know someone at any succession of such parties, however prolonged.

And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?

I long for another human face just as I fear it.

I liked that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself.

And what was I panicking about anyway? Being left alone with myself? I'd rather have a vampire around? Well. Yes.

I'm real, too. I just don't know, real what.

It's not silly at all. The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind.

I was not frightened, but I was ashamed. "I'm sorry," I said. The claws retreated, and his arm dropped. "Don't be," he said. "I don't mind telling you." He looked at me. "But perhaps you mind being told.