Quotes about Introspection

When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.

Ruin and recovery are both from within.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise ... his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

And unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are all wall-eyed.

You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that... The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.

Besides, who is to say that the feelings he writes in his diary are his true feelings? Who is to say that at each moment while the pen moves he is truly himself? At one moment he might truly be himself, at another he might simply be making things up. How can one know for sure? Why should he even want to know for sure?

We can only know and understand ourselves fully through others — through the way we experience others and ourselves in relation to others, and the way others experience us.

You will believe me when I say the life we lead grows less and less distinct from the life we led of Cruso's island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.

Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.