66 Quotes On Deep Introspection

In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it's easy to lose sight of the deeper questions that guide our existence. Taking a moment for introspection allows us to reconnect with our core values, beliefs, and aspirations. It is through these reflective moments that we gain clarity, foster personal growth, and become more aligned with our true selves. In this collection of top 66 quotes on deep introspection, you'll find wisdom from philosophers, thinkers, and writers who have explored the depths of the human psyche. Each quote invites you to pause, ponder, and perhaps discover new insights into your own journey. Whether you're seeking inspiration or simply a moment of quiet reflection, these words are sure to resonate and inspire.

1. “...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

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

3. “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

4. “Look within, There is no difference between yourself, Self and Guru. You are always Free. There is no teacher, there is no student, there is no teaching.” - H.W.L. Poonja

5. “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

6. “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” - Aldous Huxley

7. “Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.” - William S. Burroughs

8. “You can't lie to your soul.” - Irvine Welsh

9. “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 Diaz

10. “When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.” - Confucius

11. “What is reading but silent conversation.” - Walter Savage Landor

12. “Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment.But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner.This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment.Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.” - David Brooks

13. “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."[The Minotaur]” - Albert Camus

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

15. “Mom, Dad, I’m fourteen, I see what the world is like. And, no, I did not get this from the psychologist...I came to this understanding on my own, from what I really see in myself and about life.” - Darryl Steven Markowitz

16. “It seemed that for every evil they defeated, worse took its place, but Vaughn banished the thought that this all might be a cruel game, a hoax played on the… ''No! I know what true Goodness, true Life, true Love is. Besides, this is too miserable to be a game…unless demons…NO! Besides, even if I was some kind of pawn, well, then this game piece would rebel!” - Darryl Steven Markowitz

17. “I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn” - Robert Frost

18. “There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.” - E.L. Doctorow

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

20. “So he explored, explored within himself, scanning himself with a lamp, as if it were not himself at all but some strange monster that he had been commanded to guard.” - Hermann Bahr

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

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

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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “Talking with Elaine like that, with no judgment from her or anything, seemed to bring my feelings more to the surface so I could look at them. I love times like that; you don't get many of them.(Walker, in STOTAN!)” - Chris Crutcher

27. “that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks” - Jim Fergus

28. “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

29. “Even if you think you're doing well and have it all figured out, there is a voice you will always inevitably hear at some point which nags at you and says "but wait..." Don't ever dismiss it, listen to what it has to say. Life will never be close enough to perfect, and listening to that voice means stepping outside of yourself and considering your own wrongdoings and flaws.” - Ashly Lorenzana

30. “But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?” - Robertson Davies

31. “Perhaps I had never had a grip on myself to start with, living life on cruise-control while I waited for a home that would never be mine. It would be warm. Loving. Wonderfully chaotic, occasionally tempestuous, but full of good intentions and laughter. It would be all of the great things embodied by your run-of-the-mill greeting card, and it was still the last thing that I thought of each night as I let myself believe for a moment or two that such things were possible.” - Alice Yi-Li Yeh

32. “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

33. “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

34. “I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot.” - Roman Payne

35. “It's fine to feel truer than others.But it's much truer to fix our fault.” - Toba Beta

36. “The mind becomes much more beautiful, when man could see his own weaknesses.” - Toba Beta

37. “An accusing heart couldn't see her own sins.” - Toba Beta

38. “A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.” - A.L. Kennedy

39. “Why does nothing change, even when you set out for a faraway place?” - Young-ha Kim

40. “Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting.” - Young-ha Kim

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

42. “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

43. “If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subjects and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognise my moods in the motionless suffering of things.” - Italo Calvino

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

45. “Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.” - Stella Gibbons

46. “So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.” - John Gardner

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

48. “A positive attitude is most easily arrived at through a deliberate and rational analysis of what’s required to manifest unwavering positive thought patterns. First, reflect on the actual, present condition of your mind. In other words, is the mind positive or not? We’ve all met individuals who perceive themselves as positive people but don’t appear as such. Since the mind is both invisible and intangible, it’s therefore easier to see the accurate characteristics of the mind through a person’s words, deeds, and posture. For example, if we say, “It’s absolutely freezing today! I’ll probably catch a cold before the end of the day!” then our words expose a negative attitude. But if we say, “The temperature is very cold” (a simple statement of fact), then our expressions, and therefore attitude, are not negative. Sustaining an alert state in which self-awareness becomes possible gives us a chance to discover the origins of negativity. In doing so, we also have an opportunity to arrive at a state of positiveness, so that our words and deeds are also positive, making others feel comfortable, cheerful, and inspired.” - H.E. Davey

49. “The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?” - Barbara Ehrenreich

50. “How they are all about, these gentlemenIn chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,Like night around their order's star and gemAnd growing ever darker, stony-faced,And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but proppedHigh by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:How they surround each one of these who stoppedTo read and contemplate the objects d'art,Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.Whit exquisite decorum they allow usA life of whose dimensions we seem sureAnd which they cannot grasp. They were aliveTo bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,That is to be of darkness and to strive.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

51. “If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.” - Ayya Khema

52. “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

53. “Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda.The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.” - Thomas Merton

54. “True inspiration unfolds itself, not by force or it becomes fake. True intuition is also the ability to be observant.” - Chris Messner

55. “The journey towards your inner self is through Solitude!” - Farheen Viquas

56. “Așa-i de când lumea, că cine se introspectează prea mult, acela nu mai e de acord nici cu sine însuși, în cele din urmă, iar cine nu-i de acord cu sine însuși, acela nu-i capabil să ia o hotărâre.” - Henryk Sienkiewicz

57. “...when you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself...” - John Geddes

58. “Wrestling through her introspection has coloured  her views of life, people and relationships. And working it out, with all the excitement, pain and fear that went with it, has given her a strong sense of herself. She knows who she is because of it. Not only that: it has given her a strong bond to those who are also, in different ways and for different reasons, disconnected from society. ironically, she is connected to the Aaron's and Kyra's of this world by the fact that they are each of them disconnected.” - Sarah Rayner

59. “Being happy is easy. Easy until you start believing that happiness is tied to a relationship, a job, your income, a product you buy, fame, a status, or any of a number of things that you don't currently have in your possession. Being happy is easy, as long as you understand everything you need to be happy exist in you already. You just have to stop looking out and start looking in to find it.” - Sean King

60. “When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.” - John D. MacDonald

61. “It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article.And Rook.Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook.That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.” - Richard Castle

62. “Thurough examination will do the healthy no harm, and it may bless the sick.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

63. “There are essentially two questions in life - a spiritual question and a material question. The spiritual question is 'Who am I?' The material question is 'What am I to do with my life?' One leads to the other.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

64. “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

65. “The past may not hurt you, but it won't challenge you, either.” - Brad Meltzer

66. “Who are you, really? The question penetrated, echoed, demanded an answer. It nipped at me in ways I wasn't prepared for, pinched in places I didn't like. Was I really so entrenched in the world I'd been raised in, so set in my ways that I couldn't look beyond the surface of another person and see a human being? Was I that shallow?” - Lisa Wingate