Quotes & Sayings About Introspection

As Linda says again and again, the simple life isn't the easy life. Each soul here is enormously courageous. The conflicts in their lives have not been trivial. It's taken most of them a great deal of time, introspection and explanation to arrive at their chosen sanity. They are intrepid explorers, leaving the security of the known for the hoped-for brighter tomorrow. — Linda Breen Pierce

Strange how you could become a man's god without noticing. — Richard K. Morgan

The third person. There was no sign of this happiness on the outside, she knew. She was bored by this happiness that seemed out of place, impatient to get rid of it. The feeling was less pleasurable than she had imagined it might have been, less well-defined, and when she felt along its strings she found it was not easily traced or attached to the objects she thought it might have been attached to. Perhaps it was not attached to anything at all. — Joanna Walsh

Periods of silent solitude spent in introspective reflecting are sacred and a source of great strength and comfort. We can learn from listening to the rhythms of nature and from appreciating the eternal hush of the cosmos. — Kilroy J. Oldster

And here's the surprising truth: As you gaze at yourself in the mirror held by another, you will see far more than your flaws. You also will see the beauty that is uniquely you; beauty that others see clearly and you may hardly know exists. That is also part of the truth about you. — Steve Goodier

We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure
your perfection
is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Scientists at the University of Georgia recently discovered that rats are self-aware and capable of something like introspection - complex — Virginia Morell

I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many a time I longed to be back among the sheep again, for fear of losing my peacefulness of spirit. — R.D. Blackmore

Sometimes I think that wisdoms slip from my mind like drool from the lips of an idiot ...
Where's all this stuff coming from? Is it any good? Any good in, you know, the wisdom sense? Who am I to spout this stuff anyway?
Well, here's the thing. You too can find yourself shedding wisdom like cat hair if you only allow yourself the liberty of introspection.
Think about what you alone know that no one else does. That one neat wonderful profound insight. It is fully yours. No one else on this planet of about six billion people understands it like you do.
Now, see if you can share it with someone. Bestow it, a gift of yourself.
Wisdom is like gossip. Except it's the good kind. — Vera Nazarian

In the martial arts, introspection begets wisdom. Always see contemplation on your actions as an opportunity to improve. — Mas Oyama

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations". — May Sarton

It's a myth that crazy people don't know they're crazy. Many of us are surely as capable of epiphany and introspection as anyone else, maybe more so. I suspect we spend far more time thinking about our thoughts than do sane people. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Information is key to raising awareness of what our brain withholds from our conscious mind. Unfortunately we are hardwired emotion-driven thinkers. It takes effort and training to exercise introspection and mindfulness. — David Bloor

Introspection is always retrospection — Jean-Paul Sartre

It [his brothers assassination] made Robert Kennedy, a man unprepared for introspection, think for the first time in his life, what he wanted to do, and what he stood for. — Jack Newfield

I don't believe in the inner journey. Real life is lived outdoors. — Marty Rubin

Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting. — Young-Ha Kim

Sinner, I would be loth to have thy soul destroyed by wilful self-delusion ... So consequently, there is a despair which is a grievous sin; and there is a despair which is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. I would not have thee despair of the sufficiency of the blood of Christ to save thee, if thou believe, and heartily obey him; nor of the willingness of God to pardon and save thee, if thou be such a one; nor yet absolutely of thy own salvation; because, while there is life and time, there is some hope of thy conversion, and so of thy salvation ... Never stick at the sadness of the conclusion, man, but acknowledge plainly, If I die before I get out of this estate, I am lost forever. It is as good deal truly with thyself as not; God will not flatter thee, he will deal plainly whether thou do or not. The very truth is, this kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven(233). — Richard Baxter

Athletes don't have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because, introspection doesn't get you anywhere in a race. — Lance Armstrong

The first task is to discover the dharma by introspection, by constantly questioning yourself and asking yourself, "What is right?" — Frederick Lenz

False humility and morbid introspection are, in fact, the opposite of brokenness, as they reveal a preoccupation with self, rather than Christ. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

You don't live in the real world, Z. From what you've told me, I don't think you ever have. You're like me. You live inside this illusion. She motioned to our virtual surroundings. — Ernest Cline

A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race [the Yankees]; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion ... A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world. — Samuel Eliot Morison

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history. — Jared Diamond

Don't stoop, don't stop & don't be tired in front of any circumstances; with continuous efforts & self introspection aim so high that shall take me to the top of the world — Vitthal Mane

Bells ringing with no sound
Laughter with no voice
Happiness lost without being found
Making love with no noise — T. Grassan

The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done? — Barbara Ehrenreich

Sull imagined wild brook trout, cold and firm in the fast, healthy current, buried in the water like ingots of precious metal. They hold fast to the bank, laurel-green with bellies of coal-fire. Wilder colors than you'd dare imagine on your own. Stock had destroyed the run--to be truthful, {his family} had--and silky mud rose off the bottom in slow veils where the Angus dropped their hooves. Do rivers have ghosts? Do trout swim in the air? — Matthew Neill Null

Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama's stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries? — Shashi Tharoor

I have no desire for any type of introspection at all. I don't ever ask myself any questions. I don't want answers. — Harmony Korine

To be fair, I spend most days living inside my head--hoping that when I finally open my mouth or put pen to paper, what comes out will matter. — Ryan J. Pemberton

The field of extrospection is based on two cardinal questions: "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?" In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: "What do I feel?" and "Why do I feel it?" Most — Ayn Rand

Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors. — Terence McKenna

The night air was still and damp rising from the mud banks of the creek. Our lives had been determined by the random flow of water through weaknesses in the soil. Where there was water there was humanity. Especially now, with no stable forms of transportation, our villages were all based on the flow of water. From the sides of the mountains we'd traversed just days ago it looked like an open expanse of nothing. From here it looked like an open expanse of nothing. Staring into the void above, it was the same nothing. Staring into my heart was the only form of anything solid and that was suspect at best. — Charles Miske

If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects, I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subjects and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognise my moods in the motionless suffering of things. — Italo Calvino

Stranger: Do you believe in Jesus, my friend?
Foreigner: O yes, I do but who the hell are you? — Toba Beta

The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the
privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful
continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. — Joseph Conrad

During self-reflection, the realization came that revolution begins within. — Amanda Mosher

For many people, this would be the point where one might do some soul-searching introspection, some painful confronting of truths as a means of personal growth. Being a scientist, I decided to avoid this by Studying the Subject. Donning my lab coat and postponing a microscope nearby ,I started making phone calls. — Robert M. Sapolsky

To give ourselves over to introspection is to build our own private cocoon. — Chip St. Clair

By not letting me turn you into something you're not, you've helped me be more of myself. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

My friends, if even God's law, written directly by His own finger and full of so much glory that it transfigured Moses' face, is a "ministry of death" to those who try to fulfill it, then these to-do lists, steps, and pieces of ludicrous advice will not produce the fruit we're hoping for. They will not build or protect the family or God's people in the world. They will not glorify Him. They will not make Him smile. They will only breed pride, despair, exhaustion, anger, self-pity, hypocrisy, addiction to introspection, and even abandonment of the faith. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

When you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself ... — John Geddes

Life is not profound without its own tragedy. It humbles us. Sets the bar for our introspection. Keeps us from believing we are gods. Puts our egos in check. — Crystal Evans

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. — William S. Burroughs

Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, — James Runcie

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. [ ... ] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect of body or of mind [ ... ] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults. — W. Somerset Maugham

People often tell themselves lies, in order to reach what they consider acceptance in difficult situations. In reality, they fool themselves into believing they are healed, until that lie is corrected by time, further information or their own personal growth. True healing comes when we learn to not avoid truth, but face it. Only then will we be set free. — Shannon L. Alder

We are living in a renaissance of personal writing. People are rebalancing the impersonalization endemic to modern society with an increase in personal introspection. We have enough common psychology under our belts to know that psychology doesn't explain or heal everything and that it isn't the fulfillment of awareness, but its beginning. We are undergoing a shift in paradigms in which we are trying to develop new models for humanness and human responsibility. This is no small task. Our individual lives are placed under increasing pressure to respond adequately to both inner and outer change. — Christina Baldwin

She had not, as yet, enough introspection to realize that part of his fascination for her had arisen from his unpredictability, and her conception of him as a mysterious being from a superior world who had miraculously condescended to desire her. Nor did she realize how tightly she was enmeshed by his physical attraction, a bondage woven not only from the magnetism of his body but from the very fear and pain he caused her — Anya Seton

It's fine to feel truer than others.
But it's much truer to fix our fault. — Toba Beta

Development is a voluntary process. You need a positive decision to make the right steps, but it starts with introspection. — Thomas L. Friedman

When it is imperative to make a vivid offering towards life then a simulated introspection for all possible dimensions may be endured to establish a relationship with external world and world within — Amit Gupta

[T]his is the strongest encouragement to them in sinning; and we have need to lay all our batteries against this bulwark of presumption (361). — Richard Baxter

I am a victim of introspection. — Sylvia Plath

I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence. — Young-Ha Kim

Stop saying that. If you are weak, then what am I? I can't hold onto anything, because I don't even see myself. This is the punishment for evading everything. Afraid to be rejected. A coward who is overly sensitive to the sorrounding reactions. I don't even notice if no one points it out. "You must be very sad". Compared to anyone, compared to anything else, I don't understand myself the most. — Jun Mochizuki

A long road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of introspection. — Patrick Rothfuss

Every organization needs to be introspective, transparent, and honest with itself. This only works if everyone is unified on the goals and purposes of the organization and there is trust within the team. High-performing, successful organizations build cultures of introspection and trust and never lose sight of their purpose. — Colin Powell

In Zen you practice zazen, mindfulness and other forms of introspection to find out who you are and what you want, to balance your spirit, develop willpower, increase your sense of humor and gain wisdom. — Frederick Lenz

Group membership can modify individuals' perceptions of themselves. Unable to separate their personal introspection from the ways they believe other people perceive them, teenagers may have what psychologists call an "imaginary audience", meaning that they believed that other people are just as attuned to their appearance and behavior as they are. — Alexandra Robbins

Conscious evolution of the free enterprise system happens when we realize that neither the heavy handedness of government nor the greed of unregulated enterprise holds the answer to prosperity. It is the radical introspection of both sides leading to a conscious evolution that will save this system we call capitalism. — Said Elias Dawlabani

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self. — David Brooks

We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Spending time looking for what is missing in your life is futile; if you fail to look within yourself. When we challenge everything we believe we are, we reveal that which we never knew about our own selves. — Nicolas G. Janovsky

Whisky has always tasted like introspection to me, a quiet moment after taking a sip, the lingering aftertaste, inviting you to ponder upon the flavours on your tongue. — Hannu Rajaniemi

There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther away, beyond her reach. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age. — John Gardner

Don't be fooled. Charlie remembers things exactly the way he wants to remember them. I suppose we all do ... And then we spend the rest of our lives basing the way we think about our families on what we THOUGHT happened
instead of what really did. — Janette Oke

Take time to reflect, let ideas flow on their own schedule and let yourself have numerous bad ideas to inspire the good ones. — Joanie Connell

One of the great things about art is you get to see what your concerns are, what those things tumbling around inside you are. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Modern day information overload stops us sufficiently engaging with our thoughts. — Sam Owen

This was a really amazing part of your adventure, Hamlet. You're sure that, should you ever one day write a book about this story or perhaps a stage production, you'd DEFINITELY include this scene. Why, you'd have to be literally crazy to write a story where you journey to England, get attacked by pirates - actual pirates! - but then just sum up that whole adventure in a single sentence. Hah! That'd be the worst. Who puts a pirate-attack scene in their story and doesn't show it to the audience? Hopefully nobody, that's who! Even from a purely structural viewpoint, you've got to give the audience something awesome to make up for all the introspection you've been doing; that just seems pretty obvious is all. — Ryan North

As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired. — Oscar De La Hoya

Break from self rejection, try some introspection. — Henry Rollins

Self-introspection is the way to improve any company, any marriage, any nation. And any job-hunt. — Richard N. Bolles

Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you. — Anais Nin

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America. — Allen Ginsberg

It was an unfamiliar feeling, waking up with a place to go, a place I was actually beginning to comprehend and face without a sense of terror.
More than that, I was even questioning the assumption that I was, in my bones, a scared and anxious and miserable person. It felt like the days were almost supernaturally good, that I could wake up without the usual wave of terror, that the days were admixed with some foreign substance dripping into them, some animating essence, like the dragonborn races of Endoria, dragonborn days. I felt like I'd stumbled on one of the open secrets of the world. Why hadn't I realized before that being a grown-up could be anything you wanted it to be? — Austin Grossman

There was someplace urgent he needed to be, and he wasn't going to make it there on time. It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and irreversible and very soon forgotten. We needed more troubles like that. — Lyndsay Faye

Press on, then, in the exercise of introspection. It is important to know yourself really well. It will not help you a bit if you lie when it comes to yourself. In other words, don't lie to yourself about you. Know where you're weak. Know your thoughts. Know the places in your heart that you don't want to give to the Lord. You must build time into your life to become aware of what's really going on in your heart, in your mind, and deep inside of you. Constantly ask yourself good diagnostic questions about areas of doubt and disbelief. — Matt Chandler

Sometimes the feeling would sneak up on me over a number of days: friendliness, tenderness, slowly growing in the hothouse of my introspection, swelling into something more beautiful and dangerous: a kind of euphoric enchantment. Sadly, this state never lasted more than a couple of days. Because pretty soon, hope-that sly, insinuating monster-would creep into my heart. — Sam Taylor

Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding. — Erin Meyer

Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the "I," with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

For so many years she'd lived a life absent of emotion or companionship or love. She'd functioned as an automaton, acting out her part without feeling, lacking even the introspection to ask why she'd cast herself in this role, or where it all might end. It hadn't even been a lonely existence because she felt no loneliness; she felt nothing. Whereas now, she felt everything. Emotions festered in her; fear pecked like a carrion bird, guilt ripped and chewed. And, at her core, that crushing sense of hopelessness, threatening to consume everything that she'd started to become. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information. — Jorge Luis Borges

A curious superstition. This is the belief that, if there be introspection at all, it must give exhaustive and infallible information. — C. D. Broad

Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself. — Josh Lanyon

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. — Aristotle.

In evaluating ourselves, we tend to be long on our weaknesses and short on our strengths. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Why does nothing change, even when you set out for a faraway place? — Young-Ha Kim

The past may not hurt you, but it won't challenge you, either. — Brad Meltzer

Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?
A: Because you know I will never answer. — Vera Nazarian

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection. — Andre Gide

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion. — Blaise Pascal

The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority ... the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started at grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate, or to have mothers who were about to hare off with some bloke, or to have dead fathers and shabby stepfathers. What busy lives they led. How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty. — Martin Amis

A writer needs a life of introspection. — Tom Robbins

When a person finds life hard, he needs motivation and inspiration; but if he finds life's journey easy, then he needs meditation and introspection to know the true quality of his life. — Anuj

In the modern world, the anxious temperament does offer certain benefits: caution, introspection, the capacity to work alone. These can be adaptive qualities. — Robin Marantz Henig

In the West, people pride themselves on being the defenders of democratic rights and the champions of freedom. But if the Western world really cares for the benevolence of the whole world, it will have to turn to introspection. — Nirmala Srivastava