Introspection Quotes

“Silence is an intimate space where the boundaries between memory and reality dissolve. Let it be an invitation to introspection and to shape our identity.
("Only silence remained")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Know your strengths; but more importantly, know your limitations.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“To open a book is to silence the ego, and awaken the self.”
― Pamela Cox

“Upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner. But it's sad music that makes us want to touch the sky.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“I think I’m starting to like you. You’re not so bad, for a celestial ball-swallowing hellhound.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Do Not Be Afraid: A Whimsical Urban Fantasy About a Stranded Angel, a Hellhound Puppy, and a Second Chance on Earth

“You simply live. You connect. You create.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Do Not Be Afraid: A Whimsical Urban Fantasy About a Stranded Angel, a Hellhound Puppy, and a Second Chance on Earth

“We are all living, at most, half of a life. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“You know, maybe the question I’ve gotta ask myself is not do I have issues; maybe it’s how many issues do I have?”
― J.M. Clarke

“It’s often said there’s no sense dwelling on the past, but David disagreed.
Sometimes, there was nothing like a good old-fashioned sulk to clear your head and refocus it on what was important.”
― Daniel Thorman, The Zodiac Quest: A LitRPG Adventure

“Reading today the words I said that night, I cringe. The talk reflects the messages and values I'd always talked about and continue to–good governance, trust, and consensus building, equality and inclusion, and justice for Indigenous peoples. But the speech also reveals how much I had begun playing into the partisan political game and projecting a belief in the image the Liberal party wanted to construct. While I know I sincerely believed and meant every word I spoke at the time–and as I am reminded, everyone in that room did as well–I cringe today because I know it is to a great degree an imaginary and ideal image, and I guess I'm surprised that I ever subscribed to it quite that much. I always felt I would never drink the Kool-Aid. I think it shows how convincing Trudeau was, or perhaps how desperate we all were for hope and a different way of doing politics. [Taken from audiobook; there may be transcription errors.]”
― Jody Wilson-Raybould, "Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power

“I was pleasantly surprised how open the [Liberal] party was to accepting language regarding the recognition of Indigenous rights, which was how Indigenous peoples had talked about the transformative change that was needed for decades. I realized in hindsight that the Liberal party did not understand what this really meant, or did not care. But at the time the inclusion only reinforced my belief that I was doing the right thing. Later it became clear that what was in the platform did not really matter that much. The platform was simply to get elected. The about-face on electoral reform in 2016 was the first big public indication of this for me.”
― Jody Wilson-Raybould, "Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power

“This is reminiscent of the words by the poet Theodore Roethke, quoted by psychologist Timothy Wilson: “[S]elf-contemplation is a curse/ That makes an old confusion worse.”112 Eugene is waiting for an emotional self-revelation which he cannot achieve through rational introspection because the self is not a “hard,” fixed, knowable entity with clear edges, and with content. The social self is in fact a pragmatic entity, ongoingly shaped by circumstances and others' actions. In engaging in introspection, we try to discover fixed needs or wants, but these needs or wants are being shaped in response to situations. For this reason, introspection interferes with the capacity to feel strong and unmitigated emotions, activated through non-rational cognitive circuits.”
― Eva Illouz, Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation

“Not all battles are fought with blades. Some are won in silence.”
― Ciaran MacLeod, The Sword and the Hearth

“Do not rush to solve the riddle of yourself..
some truths only bloom in the slow seasons.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn't occur somehow inside of me, but between what I perceive as me and not-me.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“„I think by haunting other people’s ghosts, we just try to forget our own. We haunt other people’s history and meaning, reflecting it in everything we do ourselves. Yet we are cursed with our own ghosts — ones that maybe others will be blessed to chase, in order to forget their own.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“There's something about sadness that removes the scales from our eyes.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“I still like your looks...but Sam d'get into your bones. He's got into my bones, I tell ee and tis no pretty way to be!”
― Winston Graham, The Four Swans

“She was empty. 'I am an object in the room,' she had told herself. 'That is all that I am.' This belief spared her the agony of her own intelligence”
― Otessa Moshfegh

“The world folded in on itself - quiet, final & far from me.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“Grief makes time feel soft. Like film peeled off a reel. Like maybe nothing ever happened the way you thought.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Returning My Face: A Chilling Sci-Fi Thriller Where Someone Wants to Erase You and Live the Life They Always Wanted

“I caught my reflection smiling first, and I’ve been trying to get ahead of it ever since.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Returning My Face: A Chilling Sci-Fi Thriller Where Someone Wants to Erase You and Live the Life They Always Wanted

“There's nothing more devious than one's own self, because no one will believe it. And, I admit I had wanted to play the fool, because a fool is easier than one's own self; but since a fool is an extreme, after all, and an extreme sparks curiosity, then I finally settled on my very own self. Well then, what is my very own self? A golden mean: neither stupid, nor intelligent, without any particular gifts, and "dropped from the moon", as the sensible people here say, isn't that so?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Let's suppose you lived on the moon. Let's suppose you did all those absurd, vile things up there. From here, you know for certain that people up there will laugh at you and hold your name in contempt for a thousand years, eternally, over all the moon. But now you're here and you're looking at the moon from here. From here, what do you care about everything you perpetrated there, and that people up there will be holding you in contempt for a thousand years, isn't that true?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Not a single people,' he began, as if reading line for line and at the same time continuing to look threateningly at Stavrogin, 'not one people has ever yet organized itself according to the principles of science and reason. Never has there been a single example of that, except only for a brief moment, out of stupidity. Socialism, by its very nature, must be atheism, for it has specifically proclaimed, from its very first words, that it is an atheistic construct and is intentionally organized exclusively according to the principles of science and reason. Reason and science in the life of peoples always, now and from the beginning of time, have fulfilled merely a secondary and auxiliary function; and that will be their function until the end of time. Peoples are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them, but whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end. This is the force of a ceaseless and tireless affirmation of its own being and the denial of death. It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, "of living water", the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It is the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. "The search for God", as I call it more simply. The goal of all movements of peoples, in every people and in every period of its existence, is nothing but a search for God, its own God, unquestionably its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthesis of the personality of an entire people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never been the case that all or many peoples have had a single common God, but each has certainly had its own special one. It is a sign of a people's extinction when gods begin to be held in common. When the gods come to be held in common, then the gods die and so does faith in them, along with the peoples themselves. The stronger a people, the more singular its God. There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good. Each people has its own concept of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many different peoples begin to hold concepts of evil and good in common, then the peoples die out, and then the very difference between evil and good begins to blur and disappear.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Now I did not say to you that I don't believe at all!' he finally shouted. 'I'm letting you know, purely and simply, that I'm an unhappy, boring book and nothing more, for the time being, for the time being. But let my name perish! You're what ... we're discussing, not me... I am a man without talent, and all I can do is spill my blood and nothing more, like any man without talent. Let my blood perish as well!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“The samovar has been on the boil since before eight, but.. gone out... like everything else in the world. Even the sun, it's they say, will go out eventually. However, if necessary, I'll start it going again.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Do you want to live your entire life with me, but very far from here? It's in the mountains, in Switzerland, there's a certain place there... Don't worry, I'll never abandon you and I won't put you into a madhouse. I'll have enough money to live without begging. You will have a servant, you won't have to do any work. Everything you can possibly want will be provided for you. You will pray, go where you like and do what you like. I won't touch you. I won't leave the place and go anywhere my whole life either. If you want, I won't speak to you my whole life; if you want, you can tell me your stories every evening, as you used to in the corners of those rooms in Petersburg. I'll read books to you, if you wish. But in exchange for all this, it will be an entire life spent in one place, and a gloomy place at that. Do you want to? Can you make up your mind to do it? You won't regret it, and torment me with tears and curses?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I'm beginning not to understand anything!' Stavrogin said angrily. Why does everyone expect something from me that they don't expect from other people? Why should I endure something that no one else would endure, and seek out burdens that no one else can bear?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“I thought you yourself were looking for a burden.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons