46 Introspection Quotes

Just as rust, which arose from the iron itself, wears out the iron, likewise, performing an action without examination would destroy us by projecting us into a negative state of existence.

I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to.

I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being's limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.

Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself.

I usually only draw myself in down periods. I do, actually. I suppose that's why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, 'Let's have a look in the mirror.' When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don't, do you?

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates' words, 'Know thyself' remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being.

I'm the master of low expectations... I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worst part of oneself.

No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself ... The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

Pity for him who one day looks upon his inward sphinx and questions it. He is lost.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.

Listen: The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. 'Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?' she asked me. 'The big show is inside my head,' I said

So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone, I with my secret self held communing of mine own.

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly.

We take all the telescopes And we turn them inside out And we point them away from the big sky. Put your eye right up to the glas. Here we'll find the constellation of the heart. Steer your life by these stars On the unconditional chance 'Tis here where Hell and Heaven dance. This is the constellation of the heart.

He ransacked his memory like a thief going through another man's billfold.

What does it mean, to understand? ... I don't know.

Ophelia's mind went wandering you'd wonder where she'd gone through secret doors down corridors she'd wander them alone

At that stage my heart ruled my head'.

I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great.

Yet I have no stylistic nobility. My head aches because my head aches. The universe aches me because my head aches.

It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.

We seek to know the moving of each sphere, And the strange cause of th' ebbs and floods of Nile; But of that clock within our breasts we bear, The subtle motions we forget the while.

I'm an old man at fifty-four, without teeth, and with rheumatism.

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Open suspecting others comes of secret condemning themselves.

Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.

All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear. The house is empty as I write this; a cold February rain is falling outside. It's night. Sometimes when the wind blows the way it's blowing now, we lose the power. But for now it's on, and so let's talk very honestly about fear. Let's talk very rationally about moving to the rim of madness...and perhaps over the edge.

But I was caught, like a fleeting thought Stuck inside Leonard Cohen's mind