Introspection Quotes

There is something about being loved and protected by a parent (or guardian) knowing that I can be loved for who I am, not what I can do, or might one day become. Unfortunately it’s not usually like this in every single situation. From time to time, my parents made mistakes during my childhood. Possibly I was the mistake, or unwanted. But I don’t know. I had every material thing that I could have ever wanted, but there was still something missing, as if I felt distanced from my parents, or misunderstood, in the ways that they treated me. At times, I had felt completely loved and accepted by my parents, but for one reason or another, they were unable to care for me, provide for me, in some ways that would have been very important. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to make up for the experiences in life that were absent when I was a child.

~ Jonathan Harnisch

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

~ William S. Burroughs

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being.

~ Gaston Bachelard

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

Tact by its nature entails staying mum, prudently electing to forgo urging other people to pursue an alternative course of action. Creation of silent spaces in our own life and equitable distribution of periods of respite that allow for periods of equable inner reflection is necessary to spur personal growth. It is equally important to honor other people’s intrinsic need for periods of introspection, uninterrupted by unsolicited advice

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

He could take on anything and everything, it seemed, rather than leave himself time to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his life and what he might do about it.

~ Claire Tomalin

The only journey is the one within.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

[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

As all our senses are the inlets of sin, so they are become the inlets of sorrow (99).

~ Richard Baxter

It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article.And Rook.Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook.That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.

~ Richard Castle

The proper conceptual view is attained only through introspection.

~ Akshay Vijayan

Your own opinion of your state is not worth much. Ask the Lord to search you.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

True inspiration unfolds itself, not by force or it becomes fake. True intuition is also the ability to be observant.

~ Chris Messner

The beauty of the past lies in-between the perpetual unhappiness of the future and of those who live it.

~ Daniele Mauro

Shadows are our Dark Selves brought to Light.

~ Solange Nicole

The reluctant will heed wisdom only when the confidence exhibited by the righteous awakens the seed of introspection,and the awareness of acountability, into the psyche of the uncertain.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Being happy is easy. Easy until you start believing that happiness is tied to a relationship, a job, your income, a product you buy, fame, a status, or any of a number of things that you don't currently have in your possession. Being happy is easy, as long as you understand everything you need to be happy exist in you already. You just have to stop looking out and start looking in to find it.

~ Sean King

He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it. Pope Alexander

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

...when you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself...

~ John Geddes

I am trying not to philosophize. It is un-military. I think I can dig myself out of my academic mind and make an efficient officer.

~ James Carl Nelson

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

~ John Gardner

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

~ Aldous Huxley

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occa

~ Albert Camus

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

~ Rollo May

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.

~ Roger Zelazny

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

Face-to-face with a computer, people reflected on who they were in the mirror of the machine.

~ Sherry Turkle

There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.

~ E.l. Doctorow

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

~ Richard N. Bolles

He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advancing years. Seized with weariness, he sat down on the wall, and the river murmured darkly in his thoughts.

~ Hermann Hesse

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

Will therapy make you feel any better? Not if it's working.

~ Code Black

Wisdom comes from introspection.

~ Debasish Mridha

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

~ Amanda Mosher

Shall I run back into the desert ... and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet.

~ Saul Bellow

Introverts just just don't buzz as easily.

~ Susan Cain

Absence of questions is not proof of answers.

~ Sweety Shinde

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