Quotes about Introspection

I may not receive any new insights and God may not feel particularly close. This has taught me that the demand for spiritual experience can be as gluttonous as the desire for food, money, or sex. Desire for spiritual highs needs to be contained so that we can develop other parts of our being.

Sin never seems quite as shocking when it is known only to us; when we see how it looks or sounds to another, it is magnified ten times over.

I wouldn't be surprised if many marriages end in divorce largely because one or both partners are running from their own revealed weaknesses as much as they are running from something they can't tolerate in their spouse.

He remarked that thinking often spoils everything and that evil usually begins with our thoughts.

As you think, so shall you become.

All knowledge leads to self-knowledge.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.

True mastery transcends any particular art. It stems from mastery of oneself--the ability, developed through self-discipline, to be calm, fully aware, and completely in tune with oneself and the surroundings. Then, and only then, can a person know himself.

In solitude you are least alone. — Loneliness is only an opportunity to cut adrift and find yourself. In solitude you are least alone. Make good use of it.

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.