Quotes About Introspection

At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Of high descent, and more than mortal rank; An embryo God; a spark of fire divine, Which must burn on for ages, when the sun (Fair transitory creature of a day!) Has clos'd his golden eye, and wrapt in shades Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east.

The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.

My eyes are an ocean in which my dreams are reflected.

No, one could speak neither of distressed or of destitute; this street was, instead, smiling and terrible, much like the expression of intelligence and generosity that the faces of the dead have. It was a dead street, or at least that's how I defined it to myself, hoping to be able to find later a less vehement and irrational description, something that turned out to be impossible.

I'm sure not afraid of success and I've learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing I'm afraid of now is of being someone I don't like much.

figuring out who you are is the whole part of the human exprience

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.

We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

I didn't write. I just wandered about.' Martha Gelhorn, novelist and journalist

She just didn't know who else to be other than the person she was right now,

The most important distinction anyone can ever make in their life is between who they are as an individual and their connection with others.

Loneliness sends you into your body instead of your brain.

Remote and oblivious and lost in contemplation.

Soon, I'll be alone in a quiet room where, for the rest of my life, I can float farther and farther out into the world; while my student, charging off the end of every map, falls deeper and deeper into the well of himself. 'Never be afraid to enter an argument you can't immediately see yourself out of.' Can anyone tell me what a tragedy is?

and finally his current self-awareness, tinged with compulsions whose origins he couldn't access or control.

And our understanding of ourselves is deeply indebted to how we have imagined animality in the first place.

I'm confused." "Where Meg is concerned, you've been confused since you met her.

Sometimes I ask lots of people the same question." His head hurt. "What do you do if you don't get the same answer?" "Think about it.

Why?" He stopped pacing and looked at her as if she'd just asked him to count every leaf on every tree in the Old Place. "Because... you're you.

I was thinking of something that made me unhappy." Simon stopped snarling and cocked his head, looking more baffled than angry. "Why would you do that?

It takes time to find the courage to display the parts of yourself that aren't bright and shining. But you have to see them, have to know they're inside you...shadows in the garden. They are a part of all of us.

Mixed feelings and a bruised heart. Maybe that was what a first love was in the end.

I write myself into existence by the stories that I tell about my life. I also write with my posture and with my manner of walking and speaking, and I write with words and with my actions.