Quotes about Introspection

I have been negligent this month past, in these three things: I have not been watchful enough over my appetites, in eating and drinking; in rising too late in the morning; and in not applying myself with sufficient application to the duty of secret prayer.

8. Resolved, To act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important.

Ruin and recovery are both from within.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics.

One knows what is right, but holds it at arm's length for a time, neither throwing it out, nor embracing it.

One knows what is right, but holds it at arm's length for a time, neither throwing it out, nor embracing it.

But he is now suddenly untouched by its charms. He seems for the first time to sense that there might be something more. Something is troubling him that he's only just beginning to sense, whose shape he can hardly yet make out in the dim light.

At some point every person must hear from God, must know what God was calling him to do, apart from others.