Quotes about Introspection

One cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul.

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

How does one cure the soul? Through the senses

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirp by the wall, and like a blue thread a long, thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming.

But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.

I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than ever I asked. Indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.

So you think that it is only God who sees the soul? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine.

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self.

Other people are quite dreadful.  The only possible society is oneself.

Other people are quite dreadful.  The only possible society is oneself.