introspection quotes

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

I am in my own head most of the time.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.