Inner Life Quotes

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”
― Albert Einstein

“...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

“You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.”
― Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

“You are your master. Only you have the master keys to open the inner locks.”
― Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations

“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. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
― Mark Twain

“Few comprehend celibacy.
”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Self is a sea boundless and measureless.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers

“He left the hearing feeling liberated, lighter, and more transparent.”
― George Critchlow, The Lifer and the Lawyer: A Story of Punishment, Penitence, and Privilege

“If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich...”
― Alice James

“drunk on dreams aged
in memory’s casks
the soul gets
what the heart wants”
― John C. Waugh, busted haiku

“The victory over our inner self is a daily struggle. Be strong and do not give up.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“I've often thought that one of us is what we imagine, that each of us normalizes the terrible strangeness of inner life with a variety of convenient fictions.”
― Siri Hustvedt, The Sorrows of an American

“Whereas before I had been an open, outgoing, and inquisitive child, suddenly, I was quiet—almost shy.”
― Lin Wilder, My Name is Saul: A Novel of the Ancient World

“Saying them, out loud, before God, organized and eased his thoughts about them.”
― Jennifer Mugrage, The Strange Land

“How much she wanted it - that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Material things have closed boundaries; they are not accessible, cannot be penetrated, by things outside themselves. But one's existence as a spiritual being involves being and remaining oneself and at the same time admitting and transforming into oneself the reality of the world. No other material thing can be present in the space occupied by a house, a tree, or a fountain pen. But where there is mind, the totality of things has room; it is "possible that in a single being the comprehensiveness of the whole universe may dwell.”
― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

“The strength of every individual is the grace for great work.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“The "whole good" cannot be had, it would seem, without mustering all the strength of our inner life. Even in the sphere of external possessions there are goods which inherently demand, if they are to be truly ours, far more of us than mere acquisition. "'My garden,' the rich man said; his gardener smiled.”
― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

“I understood that Our Father's energy flows through everything like air through a whistle. God is like a breath that passes through people, plants, animals and all kinds of things to animate them. And his breath creates tension, harmonies and moans... It's like an expiration. (…) This energy of Our Father, which gives life and sustains the whole physical world, created the music I was perceiving. My music, which wasn't really mine...”
― Chris Nielsen, Being Pyotr Ilyich: Tchaikovsky’s Inner Life, Revealed by Himself 130 Years Later

“Most damage doesn’t happen suddenly. It accumulates quietly.”
― ELEN SIGHT, THINK TWICE: A Memoir —Delayed Desire and Irreversible Damage

“A disabled body does not mean a disabled life—spirit, faith, and creativity still know how to walk.”
― Angelika Regossi, Russian Colonial Food: Journey through the dissolved Communist Empire

“At the end of the day, we are with ourselves —
and this can either be the most beautiful thing
or the cruelest of punishments.”
― Laura Chouette, Where the Quiet Blooms

“We live in the most ‘connected’ time ever… yet loneliness is everywhere.”
― Roche Uccello, Quiet Era Diaries: A Self-Healing Journey Through Solitude and Stillness

“We lose, again and again, the present moment — which is not a poetic concept but the literal location of everything that has ever mattered to us.”
― Ayisha Bhatti, The Unhurried Soul: Learning to Live from the Inside Out

“This deeper gratitude — gratitude for what was constant when it was not felt — is one of the most spiritually mature forms of gratitude available in the inner life.”
― Ayisha Bhatti, THE INVISIBLE THREAD: Recognizing What Has Been Holding You All Along

“This is a pale reflection of a deeper truth: that the One who created us holds us with a constancy that does not require our acknowledgment. The thread is not diminished by our forgetting. It is simply waiting for us to turn and recognize it again.
To understand this, a person must first recognize the difference between connection and awareness of connection. Awareness rises and falls. It expands in moments of clarity and contracts in moments of confusion. It is shaped by fatigue, fear, distraction, longing, and countless other conditions that have nothing to do with spiritual truth. When awareness fades, the thread seems distant. When awareness returns, the thread seems near. But these impressions describe the state of the perceiver, not the state of the connection itself.”
― Ayisha Bhatti, THE INVISIBLE THREAD: Recognizing What Has Been Holding You All Along

“And it showed me the truth about myself: the fact that I hide my desires does not mean that I do not have them.”
― Ruslana Pidsadiuk, Before the Eyes of Doubt