Quotes about Introspection

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world: but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, -- that we find we have (a common Nature) -- one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.

The ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine

Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.