Quotes About Introspection

Good poets are those able to gaze into the darkness of their own hearts. A vivid or beautiful poem is not necessarily a good poem. Poetry that doesn't stand side by side with the reader has no real power.

Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it—slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone...

De toda esa miríada negra, cabalgándose y atropellándose, hacía una forma informe e inquietante, y me di cuenta, de súbito, que mi cuerpo estaba cubierto de piel de gallina. En la oscura pantalla, mis ojos turbios se reblandecieron como metal a punto de derretirse, y en voz baja le dije a aquel yo al borde de la licuefacción: '¿quién eres tú? ¿de qué estás hecho?

The man who ceases to be astonished is hollow, possessed of an extinguished heart.

We stand in darkness, surrounded by light

see on kõige hirmsam kannatus inimlikes asjades, paljut mõista ja mitte mingit võimu omada

Ah yes it took a long time before I learned to think about man as a human being before I discovered his way of thinking before I took this path in this salutary direction and speaking of man or contemplating him I stopped asking such questions as is he white or black an anarchist or monarchist fashionable or outmoded ours or theirs and I began to ask what in him is of human being . . .

Every day I practice yoga, read poetry, and translate. What do I need politics for?

A reporter is not only a megaphone into which dozens of figures, names and opinions are shouted. He'd also like to say something on his own occasionally. But what am I supposed to say?

Confusão možno chápaÃ…Â¥ ako stav neistoty a bezradnosti. Vidíme okolo seba zúriÃ…Â¥ confusão, ale nemôžeme spraviÃ…Â¥ ni?, aby sme ho zastavili. ÄŒo máte nové? Confusão! Každý, kto rozumie významu tohto slova, vie už vtedy vÅ¡etko.

After hanging up the phone Aoyama sank back back on the sofa feeling like a balloon in a warm blue sky.

Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?

The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.

My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!

My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return.

Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.

You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?

even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.