Introspection Quotes

“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”
― C.G. Jung

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
― John Ruskin

“God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself.”
― Josh Lanyon, Fatal Shadows

“Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?
A: Because you know I will never answer.”
― Vera Nazarian

“The mind becomes much more beautiful,
when man could see his own weaknesses.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“An accusing heart couldn't see her own sins.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Spending time looking for what is missing in your life is futile; if you fail to look within yourself. When we challenge everything we believe we are, we reveal that which we never knew about our own selves.”
― Nicolas G. Janovsky, Gay: A New Path Forward

“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“...It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any day of the year, by telling her she was selfish. She was always planning out her own development, desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. Her nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring bows, of shady bowers and of lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one’s mind was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Truth be told, the inward gaze is something she's not too fond of. But there are secrets that lurk in the mind, and she doesn't want any of them sneaking up on her. Sometimes it pays to take a deep look inside even if you get queasy gazing into those dark corners.”
― Alden Bell, The Reapers are the Angels

“Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting.”
― Young-ha Kim, I Have The Right To Destroy Myself

“How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?”
― Madeline Claire Franklin, The Poppet and the Lune

“There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.”
― Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd

“Don't call anyone a devil, because within you, you can experience hell and the devil, and the devil is nothing, but you!”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.”
― Marcel Proust

“Isn’t it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment?

We say, “Well, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____.”

Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I – or anyone else – decide to give in to “rational excuses” that justify feeling bad – it’s interesting that only further suffering is the result.

There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights… and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn… yet if we’re aware of what we are doing and we’re ready to let go of the suffering – then why go there at all? It’s like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that… so why do we keep repeating it?

Pain is going to happen; it’s inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day… and the next day… into next week… maybe next month… and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves!

Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go!

Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to “go there.” The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It’s only fair! It’s never my fault; it’s always someone else’s. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it.

I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever “go there” again. It’s my choice; it’s your choice. So it’s about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it’s time to stop acting like we don’t. It’s time to relinquish the excuses.”
― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life

“They were quiet for a while, eating, then Oromis asked, "Can you tell me, What is the most important mental tool a person can possess?"
It was a serious question, and Eragon considered it for a reasonable span before he ventured to say, "Determination."
Oromis tore the loaf in half with his long white fingers. "I can understand why you arrived at that conclusion-determination has served you well in your adventures-but no. I meant the tool most necessary to choose the best course of action in any given situation. Determination is as common among men who are dull and foolish as it is among those who are brilliant intellects. So, no, determination cannot be what we're looking for.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eldest

“Selfish. Growing into yourself is nothing but that.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“Know thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”
― Alexander Pope

“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, Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations

“Learning to let go is not giving up! It is simply passing the burden to a better fighter, so you can fight another day. (God)”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Introspection is a form of self-management. You reflect. You decide. You change. You allow yourself to grow.”
― Raoul Davis Jr., Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life

“Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“Appius Livius Ocella made mistakes in his whole long existence. Perhaps changing Eric was his finest hour. He created the perfect vampire. Eric's only flaw is you.”
― Charlaine Harris, Deadlocked

“I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

“If Mike convinces a woman to date him because he is dominant, the resulting relationship will be entirely different than if he had inspired this same woman to date him by convincing her that, through dating him, she could improve herself (though such dynamics might be ameliorated through therapy).

One of the core reasons why people either end up in one bad relationship after another—or come to believe that all members of a certain gender have very constrained behavior patterns—is that they do not understand how different lures function (in male communities, this often manifests in the saying “AWALT,” which stands for “all women are like that”). These people do not realize that the lure they are using is creating those relationship dynamics and/or constrained behavior patterns.

Talking with individuals who say guys or girls always act like X or Y feels like talking to a fisherman who insists that all fish have whiskers. When you point out that all the lures in his tackle box are designed specifically to only catch catfish, he just turns and gives you a quizzical look saying, “what's your point?”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships

“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, Henderson the Rain King

“Pico Iyer: “And at some point, I thought, well, I’ve been really lucky to see many, many places. Now, the great adventure is the inner world, now that I’ve spent a lot of time gathering emotions, impressions, and experiences. Now, I just want to sit still for years on end, really, charting that inner landscape because I think anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around—you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life. I thought, there’s this great undiscovered terrain that Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Merton and Emily Dickinson fearlessly investigated, and I want to follow in their footsteps.”
― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living