Top 92 Inward Life Quotes
#1. So hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip ... In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office.
Henry David Thoreau
#2. The visible action is not the self-manifestation of the inward life, but only a weak and crude attempt of a single thread to make a show of representing the whole.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#4. Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?
George Eliot
#5. We have it backward. Faith is not business, and there is no such thing as quarterly growth of the inward life.
Ricky Maye
#6. Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.
Kate Chopin
#7. The most prosaic of us betray a belief in the inward life every time we talk about 'my body' rather than 'I.
Jeanette Winterson
#8. The Reich may tell you whom you may love and whom you must hate. Oh, yes, Thomas, the Reich can dictate the inward life of every man."
"Not the inward life." Thomas looked up sharply. "Only the outward show.
Bodie Thoene
#9. In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts ...
Henry David Thoreau
#10. Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth.
Henri Barbusse
#11. I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.
Jeanne Marie Laskas
#12. How many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as in a mirror; seem to know and yet never know the inward life; never enter the other soul; and part at last, with but the vaguest notion of the universe on the borders of which they have been hovering for years?
George MacDonald
#13. Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#14. From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#15. Reality is infinitely diverse. It resists classification, inward life. Peculiar to us ... not simply the official existence.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#16. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
Henry David Thoreau
#17. When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible.
Rollo May
#18. Passion is the journey inward.. Purpose is the journey overcoming the fear.. Know Freedom and Leave Your Legend.
Jonathan Bailey
#19. Self-reliance is the key to a vigorous life. A man must look inward to find his own answers.
Robin Williams
#20. Every character has an inward spring; let Christ be that spring. Every action has a keynote; let Christ be that note, to which your whole life is attuned.
William Henry Drummond
#21. And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#22. It would never have crossed her mind spontaneously that somebody might actually need silence. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.
Muriel Barbery
#23. That there is, besides a necessity of cause and effect - which I may call the logic of space - another necessity, an organic necessity in life, that of Destiny - the logic of time - is a fact of the deepest inward certainty,
Oswald Spengler
#24. There is no finer sensations in life that which comes with victory over one's self. Go forward to a goal of inward achievement, brushing aside all your old internal enemies as you advance.
Vash Young
#25. Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#26. Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.
Frederick William Robertson
#27. In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole.
Jacob Burckhardt
#28. Islam is a way of life which opens the heart to the meaning of existence. Thus any increase of outward splendor is usually a sign of a decrease in inward illumination
Ahmad Thomson
#29. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
George Eliot
#30. When the energy is directed outside, you create and manifest life outside, and when the same energy is directed inward, you reach to the ultimate truth of life.
Roshan Sharma
#31. If you are really interested in knowing life in all its depth and dimension, it is imperative that you look inward, not out.
Sadhguru
#32. Achieve order within yourself ... an inward tranquility which knows no disturbance at any moment ... in the daily life of the home and the office.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#33. The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.
C. G. Jung
#34. Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.
Helen Keller
#35. Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
Epictetus
#36. Inward spiritual practices such as meditation, breathing techniques and self-analysis generate insights and enhance abilities, but none are so useful as learning to live harmoniously in a committed relationship, being a skillful parent, or juggling the demands of daily life.
Dan Millman
#37. Sometimes I imagine life itself as merely a long preparation and waiting, a long darkness of growth toward these adventures of the spirit, a picaresque novel, so to speak, in which the episodes are all inward.
May Sarton
#38. Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#39. All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.
H.P. Lovecraft
#41. I keep on dreaming, but to find freedom, one must first search inwards.
Fennel Hudson
#42. I think people are turning inward more now cause the world's got in such a weird, crazy state. I think its making people think more about their life and what it is really that they are doing. And how do we interact with a world that's going crazy? It's a very important time.
Dave Davies
#43. Aging teaches us to follow our life force inward. It is an object lesson in how awareness is gradually drawn towards the center ...
Stephen Levine
#44. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height.
Mahatma Gandhi
#45. The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.
May Sarton
#46. Take the very hardest thing in your life - the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. Just there He can bring your soul into blossom.
Lilias Trotter
#47. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.
Hermann Hesse
#48. There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.
Howard Thurman
#49. Life is beautiful
only if the eyes of the heart are beautiful
It looks almost catastrophic via the mind
Measuring, quibbling and boasting
Let the heart control the mind
and we are off to the next Galaxy
both inward and outward.
Gabriel Iqbal
#50. They are trying to look within, to differentiate, to discriminate, to analyze, and in doing so are bringing themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached along the barren path of self-analysis.
Watchman Nee
#51. Shutting out all external objects, fixing the vision between the eyebrows, making even the inward and outward breaths, the sage who has controlled the senses, mind and understanding, who is intent upon liberation, who has cast away desire, fear and anger, he is ever freed.
The Bhagavad Gita
#52. Poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thing when the mind
is free of society. One must become poor inwardly for then there is
no seeking, no asking, no desire, no - nothing! It is only this inward
poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#53. It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a Christ within us, the hope of glory.
Frederick William Robertson
#54. The life is not limited to the external reality but the external life, has been formed for the human's experience. The time you feel you are done with all the experiences of the external life, you have a choice to move inward.
Roshan Sharma
#55. To have a deeper understanding of life one must pause from looking outward and travel inward into the depths of consciousness.
Jiulio Consiglio
#56. You can't talk about life without talking about politics. You have to have both. If you're just a political person, you're going to burn out. If you, as an artist, are just focused inward, you're going to eventually be irrelevant.
Robert Adams
#57. Never be hurried in anything. Do all things calmly and in a spirit of repose. Do not lose your inward peace even if everything seems to be going wrong. What is anything in life compared to peace of soul?
Francis De Sales
#58. Life is enhanced and ultimately perfected by inward development.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#59. God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of His Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances - things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character.
Joni Eareckson Tada
#60. In a life full of work, family, civic responsibilities, commutes and errands, your training runs offer fertile opportunity to lean inward and listen.
Gina Greenlee
#61. Was this what the city would look like when knowledge was no longer enough? When the desire to turn inward, surrendering entirely to one's own private world of nonresistance, overwhelmed, like creeping ivy, our desire to know worlds beyond it?
Olivia Sudjic
#62. People try to create an outwardly perfect life, but the quality of life is based on the inward.
Jaggi Vasudev
#63. I won't deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward.
Heidi Julavits
#64. It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
#65. The green has widened for an Arcadian delight, and over the sky, the sun had departed. But the moonlit beams unshackled the sulky spells of life. Moon adorned with eloquent jewelry of purple as a semblance to her inward gloom and outward passion.
Nithin Purple
#66. All our salvation consists in the manifestation of the nature, life and spirit of Jesus Christ in our inward new man. This alone is Christian redemption, this alone delivers from the guilt and power of sin, this alone redeems and renews.
William Law
#67. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears
H.P. Lovecraft
#68. Mindfulness has helped me succeed in almost every dimension of my life. By stopping regularly to look inward and become aware of my mental state, I stay connected to the source of my actions and thoughts and can guide them with considerably more intention.
Dustin Moskovitz
#69. For the first time in my life, which had for years been sometimes witlessly gregarious, I discovered the pain of unwanted solitude. Like a felon suddenly thrown into solitary confinement, I found myself feeding off the unburned fat of inward resources I barely knew I possessed.
William Styron
#70. I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I'm never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.
Susan Cain
#71. The spiritual path is an inward journey. On the spiritual path, the external life remains the same, but you begin the inward journey towards the truth.
Roshan Sharma
#72. William James said, "You cannot travel without until you have travelled within." Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." People who discover their sweet spot are people who take the inward journey and examine themselves. They make the choice to live until they die.
Scott M. Fay
#73. Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life; for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,
the human soul!
James Russell Lowell
#74. Through dreams a door is opened to mythology, since myths are of the nature of dreams, and that, as dreams arise from an inward world unknown to waking consciousness, so do myths: so, indeed, does life.
Joseph Campbell
#75. Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.
John Chrysostom
#76. Let us look upward and look inward, in the faith of the Son and the Spirit, and God will show us that every word written in the Book of the Covenant is not only true, but that it can be made spirit and truth within us, and in our daily life. This can indeed be.
Andrew Murray
#77. Neither in thy actions be sluggish nor in thy conversation without method, nor wandering in thy thoughts, nor let there be in thy soul inward contention nor external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure.
Marcus Aurelius
#78. Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one.
Socrates
#79. the sudden hour that had transformed his life, the hour of his perceiving with a mute inward gasp akin to the low moan of apprehensive passion that a world was left him to conquer and that he might conquer it if he tried. It
Henry James
#80. When your interest only remains in the external world, you simply separate yourself from the whole truth. The whole process of life is to take you inward.
Roshan Sharma
#81. I would hold, my friend, that what you describe is but one side of the matter, and indeed one that looks only inward, as if the borders of your life enclose everything to be valued, while what lies beyond is of no worth whatsoever.
Steven Erikson
#82. Death seems simply to be a return to that unknown inwardness out of which we were born ... the truly inward source of one's life was never born ... Outwardly I am one apple among many. Inwardly I am the tree.
Alan W. Watts
#83. Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will.
Albert Schweitzer
#84. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.
Henry David Thoreau
#85. I've learned that turning inward is where you develop emotional awareness. This is the place where you connect with your soul, to God and nothing (no thing) can come between you and your source.
Alice Hocker
#86. Unless you can guide the mind inward, and take the attention beyond the comprehension of mind, and directly experience life, you never reach to the ultimate truth of life.
Roshan Sharma
#87. The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.
Francis Schaeffer
#88. Standing on soil feels so much different than standing on city pavement; it lets you look inward and reflect and see who you really are, while you see a beautiful, unspoiled land as far as the eye can see. It allows your inner life to grow.
Ricardo Montalban
#89. So what if you're scared spitless? So what if you're intimidated, insecure or inundated with doubt? If it's the thing that will advance you, do it anyway. Forward movement always begins with an inward decision.
Toni Sorenson
#90. Tis a strange calling!' muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, 'to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats.
James Fenimore Cooper
#91. When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country--and the time will come--then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength.
Ernst Junger
#92. If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward
destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.
Hermann Hesse
