Quotes About Introspection

In some matters, he said, it is better to be intellectually uncertain rather than superficially sure. This will still leave us with a great deal to be certain about, while maintaining a humility to learn.

didn't exist. Maybe, like her, Barry was scared, and sick of feeling like death could come at any time. Maybe

At the moment, she felt like she couldn't possibly be surprised . . . and she knew from experience that feeling that way was usually when the universe decided to shake things up a little more, to try and find out what a person was created from, clay or sand, adapt or crumble. As

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.

A man?s mind is never all of one thing, nor does he know himself or all his reasons beneath the masks he wears. They deceive even the wearer.

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

This silence pours a solitariness Into the very essence of my soul; And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet, Hath something too of sternness and of pain.

Know thyself. Then know that you are a human being, a member of the species of mankind. So know first and foremost that you do not know, and what you claim to know is almost certainly a means of distracting yourself from what you really know.

I need to tease out how far I was to blame. You'll understand that, Dr Freud. Guilt. Does anyone escape it? Is guilt the reason we make up stories?

I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.

My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

For an instant, silence, noisier than a waterfall.

Until you know who you are you can't write.

You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.

human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions

Most people define themselves by their work, or where they come from, or suchlike; we had lived too far inside our heads. It makes actuality damn hard to handle.

Our lives teach us who we are. I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own ... then you might as well be dead.

our lives teach us who we are

Beware the man (or jinni) of action when he finally seeks to better himself with thought. A little thinking is a dangerous thing.

the true direction of her heart: that is to say, inwards, to the reality of dreams.

and I began to wonder if we were moral beings at all or simply savages who defined their private bigotries as necessary ethics, as the only ways to be.

I am by nature an inward man, he said silently into the disconnected phone. I have struggled, in my fashion, to find my way towards an appreciation of the high things, towards a small measure of fineness. On good days I felt it was within my grasp, somewhere within me, somewhere within. But it eluded me. I have become embroiled, in things, in the world and in its messes, and I cannot resist. The grotesque has me, as before the quotidian had me, in its thrall

O, the conflicting selves jostling and joggling within these bags of skin. No wonder we are unable to remain focused on anything for very long; no wonder we invent remote-control channel-hopping devices. If we turned these instruments upon ourselves we'd discover more channels than a cable or satellite mogul ever dreamed of...

It is hard for a person of no faith like myself to comprehend the moment when faith dies in the human heart. The kneeling believer who suddenly understands that there is no reason to pray because nobody's listening.