Quotes About Introspection

In bed that night, in the darkness, with the illuminated dial of her alarm clock glowing from the bedside table, she asked herself whether one could force oneself to like somebody, or whether one could merely create the conditions for affection to come into existence and hope that it did, spontaneously.

You do not have to read a book to understand how the world works. You just have to keep your eyes open.

Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.

She was, in fact, often wrong--and knew it. Life became difficult when those who were often wrong did not know it.

It was not edifying to dwell on the failings of others.

We think that we can fix our lives by taking some simple step, but it's not like that. Most problems need lots of sticking plasters. They need coaxing and massaging and looking at from all sorts of different angles.

The trouble with having a conscience, she said to herself, is that it never sleeps.

All of us, Mma Ramotswe thought, wanted something, even if we were unable to tell anybody exactly what it was that we wanted.

She had barely talked to Jamie about his school days, and she wondered whether this was another area of experience that was for some reason out of bounds. Had he been happy? Who had his school friends been? She had no idea. There must be a reason why he had decided not to attend his ten-year class reunion; normally Jamie's instincts were social. If invited to a party, he went, and usually enjoyed himself; perhaps this did not apply to reunions.

it made me think of everything I had done. It made me weigh up my life. And it made me want to tie things up, so that next time - and I hope there will not be a next time - the next time I faced death like that, I could think: I have set me life in order.

Mma Ramotswe smiled, but only to herself.

But some of us cannot see love, she said to herself, even when it is there, right before us, asking us to invite it in.

Ah!" said the therapist. "That's precisely what you're meant to do, you know. Thinking precedes verbalisation, and verbalisation precedes resolution. And much as I approve of that, what we're trying to do here is to find out what you think without thinking. In other words, we want to find out what's going on in your mind. Because that's what—

we all have some things we are ashamed of.

One of the drawbacks to being a philosopher was that you became aware of what you should not do, and

It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things.

Although she was unenthusiastic about theology, she had long since realised that the real point of prayer was not to flatter those addressed; prayer was a form of meditation, she decided, and it did not detract from its efficacy that nobody was listening.

I think it's best for us to face up to our own mistakes," she

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.

the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them.

Who is happier, those who are aware, and doubt, or those who are sure of what they believe in, and have never doubted or questioned it? The answer, she had concluded, was that this had nothing to do with happiness, which came upon you like the weather, determined by your personlaity.

But when all was said and done he thought that there was something beyond us, something other than the human, and that if you closed your eyes and thought about this thing long enough you could hear its voice within you.

There was that quality of sensitivity, that look in his eyes that told her, and everybody else who cared to look for it, that he understood , but, at the same time, that he was elsewhere.