#introspection

One of the great things about art is you get to see what your concerns are, what those things tumbling around inside you are. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#introspection #writing #art

How they are all about, these gentlemen In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced, Like night around their order's star and gem And growing ever darker, stony-faced, And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped, Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles: How they surround each one of these who stopped To read and contemplate the objects d'art, Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours. Whit exquisite decorum they allow us A life of whose dimensions we seem sure And which they cannot grasp. They were alive To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature, That is to be of darkness and to strive. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#introspection #maturity #poetry #rainer-maria-rilke #rilke

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

#introspection #self-reflection #unconditional_acceptance #friendship

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

#nature #outdoors #peace #sun #war

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel. ↗

— John Ruskin

#psychology #self-importance #self-involvement #psychology

Know thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#introspection #religion #religion

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

#introspection #self-reflection #subsistence #life

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age. ↗

— John Gardner

#introspection #age

How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else? ↗

— Madeline Claire Franklin

#family #introspection #life #self-awareness #the-poppet-and-the-lune

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#introspection #uncertainty #poets