Introversion Quotes

When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.

~ Criss Jami

Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.

~ Criss Jami

There is a certain delightful sort of hope which the introvert can receive only by having company over...the hope that they will leave soon.

~ Criss Jami

A Manifesto for Introverts1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers.2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.7. It's OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.8. 'Quiet leadership' is not an oxymoron.9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.10. 'In a gentle way, you can shake the world.' -Mahatma Gandhi

~ Susan Cain

So the next time you see a person with a compose face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.

~ Susan Cain

Introverts don’t see life as one big cocktail party. We’re content with just a few meaningful relationships.

~ Jenn Granneman

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.

~ Ross Macdonald

In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.

~ Criss Jami

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.

~ Criss Jami

When you fail to tap into your wellsprings of inner strength due totoxic habits, environments or people, you wind up feeling trapped, stranded and unhappy. You end up in soulless jobs, destructive relationships and empty friendships. Most of all, youfind yourself unsatisfied with who you are, and you often become your own worst enemy,perpetuating the cycles of pain, anger and fear within you – like I did

~ Aletheia Luna

As an introvert, you crave intimate moments and deep connections--and those usually aren't found in a crowd.

~ Jenn Granneman

Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.

~ Jenn Granneman

Nothing is as irritating to a shy man as a confident girl.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We have created youth ministry that confuses extroversion with faithfulness. We have effectively communicated to young people that sincerely following Jesus is synonymous with being 'fired up' for Jesus, with being excited for Jesus, as if discipleship were synonymous with fostering an exuberant, perky, cheerful, hurray-for-Jesus disposition like what we might find in the glee club or at a pep rally.

~ James K.a. Smith

One of the ways I know I shouldn't be online is when I'm looking to get something that I already have in abundance as a child of God.

~ Sammy Rhodes

Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures.

~ Thomas Mann

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

~ Susan Cain

Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.

~ Irvine Welsh

My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage.

~ A.s. Byatt

If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out.

~ Criss Jami

You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house.

~ Criss Jami

I’m going inside of myself and never coming out.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all.

~ Criss Jami

To develop understanding and compassion for who we are as introverts, we must be able to explore who we are, what makes us happy, what makes us unhappy, and what oursubsequent needs are.

~ Aletheia Luna

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

~ Susan Cain

When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found that having an orientation inconsistent with societal values is a risk factor for poor mental health. The findings support what the researchers call the personality-culture clash hypothesis: Psychological adjustment depends on the degree of match between personality and the values of surrounding society. To the extent that introverts feel the need to explain, apologize, or feel guilty about what works best for them, they feel alienated not only from society but from themselves.

~ Laurie A. Helgoe

There is something quite wonderful about sharing a secret.

~ Joyce Rachelle

Historically, psychologists have looked at introversion as the absence of extroversion. They measure extroversion, and if you are low in it, then you are considered an introvert. This perpetuates the perception of introversion as negative space, and introverted activities as not really doing anything. We need to train ourselves, and others, out of this idea. We need to start seeing doing nothing (or reading, or working alone on projects, or whatever it is we do to recharge) as activities that are as valid as any social event.

~ Sophia Dembling

If personal space is vital to creativity, so is freedom from peer pressure.

~ Susan Cain

People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.

~ Alice Hoffman

Complaints of feeling cut off, shut off, out of touch, feeling apart or strange, of things being out of focus or unreal, of not feeling one with people, or of the point having gone out of life, interest flagging, things seeming futile and meaningless, all describe in various ways this state of mind. Patients usually call it 'depression', but it lacks the heavy, black, inner sense of brooding, of anger and of guilt, which are not difficult to discover in classic depression. Depression is really a more extraverted state of mind, which, while the patient is turning his aggression inwards against himself, is part of a struggle not to break out into overt angry and aggressive behaviour. The states described above are rather the 'schizoid states'. They are definitely introverted. Depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them.

~ Harry Guntrip

Although she was gregarious, she inadvertently separated herself from people because she was so often inside her own head, focusing on her creativity.

~ Alexandra Robbins

I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.

~ L.m. Montgomery

Osborn was a founding partner of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBDO), but it was as an author that he really made his mark, beginning with the day in 1938 that a magazine editor invited him to lunch and asked what his hobby was. “Imagination,” replied Osborn.

~ Susan Cain

That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the elders—that he could put in his appearance at large gatherings from morning to evening without seeming either triumphant or dejected—this must be because he was thoroughly accustomed to this kind of life, thought Daisuke; it was probably like the jellyfish's floating in the sea and not finding it salty.

~ Sōseki Natsume

The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.

~ Criss Jami

Many preachers are at home among books but quite at sea among men.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When we take into consideration the needs of both ourselves and others, we communicate honestly, compassionately and effectively.

~ Aletheia Luna

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.

~ Susan Cain

I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls.Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years.

~ Janet E. Cameron