Quotes About Introspection

My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.

And to contend with the whole world is a comfort, but to contend with oneself dreadful.

la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás; aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante

I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it...but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill.

I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me–but I went away– and wanted to shoot myself.

Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.

No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual...

a bad conscience is indeed able to make life interesting.

It isn't at all difficult for philosophy to begin. Far from it: it begins with nothing and can accordingly always begin. What seems so difficult to philosophy and the philosophers is to stop.

Precisely because a human being has the ability to speak, for this very reason the ability to keep silent is an art; and precisely because this advantage of his tempts him so easily, the ability to keep silent is a great art.

salvation consists primarily in his beginning to sorrow earnestly over himself!

What I complain of is that life is not like a novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, bloodless, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to which I myself give life and being.

What every man can do is to make the movement of infinite resignation, and I for my part would not hesitate to pronounce everyone cowardly who wishes to make himself believe he can not do it. With faith it is a different matter. But what every man has not a right to do, is to make others believe that faith is something lowly, or that it is an easy thing, whereas it is the greatest and the hardest. People

Time stands still and I with it. All the plans I form fly straight back at me, when I want to spit in my own face.

she does not suspect how much reason I have for deprecating all sympathy.

For it is great to give up one's wish, but it is greater to hold it fast after having given it up, it is great to grasp the eternal, but it is greater to hold fast to the temporal after having given it up.

It is unbelievable what a person of prayer can achieve if he would but close the doors behind him.

I lack altogether patience to live. I cannot see the grass grow, but since I cannot I don't feel at all inclined to. My views are the fleeting observations of a 'travelling scholar'9 rushing through life in the greatest haste. People say the good Lord fills the stomach before the eyes. I haven't noticed; my eyes have had enough and I am weary of everything, and yet I hunger.

sessizliklerin en kesini susmak deÄŸil, konuÅŸmaktir.

Most men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes – but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

In the first case, he personally enjoyed the esthetic; in the second case, he esthetically enjoyed his personality.

I raise myself up once more, look about the room with an indescribable peace of mind, and then it's goodnight, down under the eiderdown.

It is in your power to review your life, to look at things you saw before, but from another point of view

Besides my other numerous circle of acquaintances I have one more intimate confidant – my melancholy. In the midst of my joy, in the midst of my work, he waves to me, calls me to one side, even though physically I stay put. My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return. […]