425 Quotes About Introspection

We must take stock of our actions before we take others to task for theirs. And we’ll know that we’ve done that successfully when we find ourselves taking ourselves to task and suddenly realizing in that rather revealing process that the process can probably end with us.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective survival.

Self-introspection is the way to improve any company, any marriage, any nation. And any job-hunt.

The Greeks had Hydra and Cyclops. We have Nietzsche and Pessoa: monsters of introspection and thought.

The mind is a miraculous mirror through which we see the world, but it can also see from within.

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being.

Some animals carry their shelter wherever they go. Some humans are just the same.

On July 30, 1723, when he was nineteen years old, Edwards wrote in his diary, “I have concluded to endeavor to work myself into duties by searching and tracing back all the real reasons why I do them not, and narrowly searching out all the subtle subterfuges of my thoughts.” A week later he wrote, “Very much convinced of the extraordinary deceitfulness of the heart, and how exceedingly… appetite blinds the mind, and brings it into entire subjection.

…while the outside world was full of danger, I knew my interior. I was certain that I could oust an intruder there.