Introspection Quotes

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”
― Lewis Carroll , Alice in Wonderland

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
― C.G. Jung

“You can't lie to your soul.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“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 occasion."

[The Minotaur]”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“The only journey is the one within.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Grover didn't say anything for awhile. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
― Franz Kafka

“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“The problem with introspection is that it has no end.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.”
― Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

[Modernism's Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]”
― Robert Hughes

“It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.

Ignorance is our deepest secret.

And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.

Here is a quick test:

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.

Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.

It will do both of you good.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”
― George Eliot

“The most introspective of souls are often those that have been hurt the most.”
― Shannon Alder

“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead.”
― Yvonne Woon, Dead Beautiful

“My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" -Socrates”
― Socrates

“A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time—the stuff of life.”
― Carl Sandburg

“The deeper I go into myself the more I realize that I am my own enemy.”
― Floriano Martins

“Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“What is reading but silent conversation.”
― Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations

“There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley