introspection quotes

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I often wake up in the night, and I like to have something to think about.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

Solitude is independence.

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.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

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

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

To live is to think.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.