self-reflection quotes

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

I don’t have all the answers.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

I’m perpetually lonely.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we’ve done or we’re about to do. At times like this, it’s wise to prayerfully consider whether we’re offending God with our actions.

I hate letting my teammates down. I know I’m not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don’t feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win.

O, had I but followed the arts!

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Every man is his own hell.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.