moral introspection Quotes

It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.

I judge myself severely.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

You see a moral in them? Do we have morals?

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.

We all cry out that the world is corrupt,--and I fear too justly,--but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

When your suffering is a little greater than my suffering I feel that I am a little cruel.

Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to "know of the doctrine." All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.

O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.

Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.

Stargazing is one of the most profoundly human things one can do. But perhaps we must more frequently tear ourselves away from the mystery and beauty of the starry heavens above, and rather inspect, admire and foster the moral law within.

A curious reversal in the locus of moral concern has taken place: people feel responsible for everything except for what they do.

Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.

The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge.

When I look back on it, I think, "Why didn't you stop the cruelty earlier?" To stand back was contrary to my upbringing and nature. When I stood back as a noninterfering experimental scientist, I was, in a sense, as drawn into the power of the situation as any prisoners and guards.

If we cannot be powerful and happy and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.

There is good and evil within all of us, and I enjoy searching to bring that out through my music. I like it that there are questions brought out by my music. People must look inside themselves for the answers

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.

To "know thyself" must mean to know the malignancy of one's own instincts and to know, as well, one's power to deflect it.

The more holy a man becomes, the more conscious he is of unholiness.

When I repent, here is where it starts. I try to name my sin as honestly and as specifically as possible. Here is what repenting is not. It is not excusing my sin, minimizing my sin, it's not rationalizing my sin ... Repentance is getting painfully honest with God.

Everybody is a sinner before God. And I think we magnify it today because we have television, and we have so many other technologies that make what happens in some other part of the world in our living room.

Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And dose it need superhuman efforts to recognize that revenge never can be duty? I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but that he is by no means wise.