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Inner Life Quotes

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Inner Life Quotes

“Poetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets, chokes off its nervous system and becomes mortally ill.”

World Way Culture Poet Ill Nervous Poetry Is Choke Inner Life Nervous System

Book:Fear of Fifty

Source: Fear of Fifty

“One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child possesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly perfect this inner life over a long period of time.”

Men Children Long Facts Problem Realizing Perfect Periods Active Manifest Psychics Inner Life Long Periods Of Time

Author:Maria Montessori

“The fact is I don't lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.”

Stills Enough Facts Spirit Simple Study Too Much Excess Indulge Inner Life Indulge In

Book:Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

Source: Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

“Modern culture is in so much trouble, where people don't have a deep inner life, or any deep experience of their true self in God, who they were before anyone said anything about them, before they received their first medal or ego identification. That`s why suffering is so important, because suffering is when those little rewards are taken away from you.”

People Firsts Littles Said Important Self Suffering Culture Taken Trouble Modern Ego Rewards True Self Medal Inner Life Identification Away From You Modern Culture

Author:Richard Rohr

“when I first began this diary I said I would give a record of my inner life. I begin to wonder if I have said anything about my inner life. What if I have no inner life?”

Ifs Giving Firsts Said Wonder Records What If Diaries Inner Life

Book:The Janet Frame reader

Source: The Janet Frame reader

“Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.”

World Feels Writing Too Much Cutting Flow Curse Inner Life Outside World Downfall

Author:Hilary Mantel

“Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can't be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time.”

Source: Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-busting Border-crossing Loose Canons

“Do you realize you can actually listen a person's soul into existence? Your fervent interest in the inner life of those you care for can awaken their dormant powers. The teacher Richard Moss says 'The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.' Offer this gift.”

Life Giving Persons Soul Care Interest Realizing Existence Attention Teacher Offers Purity Greatest Gifts Inner Life Moss Dormant Fervent

Book:Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

Source: Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

“Sexual acts are one of the primary means by which we can act out our inarticulated inner lives.”

Mean Sex Primaries Inner Life

Author:Sallie Tisdale

“In ancient times, any man rising up above the common people tried to shape his life according to his principles; it is no longer like than now; it is (because) for the ancients, moral was a principle of inner life, whereas in our days, most of the time one is content to adhere to an official moral, that we recognize in theory, but that one does not care to put into practice.”

People Men Doe Care Common Moral Principles Practice Theory Shapes Ancient Officials Rising Inner Life Ancient Times Rising Up

Author:African Spir

“The history of the creative progress of individual artists shows that, along with their spiritual growth and the increasing complexity of their inner life, their forms of expression become more complex.”

Shows Spiritual Form Artist Individual Growth Creative Progress Expression Complexes Complexity Spiritual Growth Inner Life

Author:Mieczyslaw Jastrun

“And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.”

Ifs Should Humans May Has Beens Facts Wanted Order Asks Literature Perfect Race Draws Universal India Greek Comprehensive Inner Life Republic Day Most Wanted

Book:India: What Can it Teach Us?

Source: India: What Can it Teach Us?

“We need balance. We need to balance our inner life with our outer life. Nature is always sitting there waiting to help us but we have to do the work. Nature is probably the greatest teacher that we’ll ever have …the earth and nature.”

Needs Wells Helping Earth Waiting Teacher Balance Sitting Inner Life Earth And Nature

Author:Dave Davies

“If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.”

Ifs Art Inner Life

Author:Seamus Heaney

“To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind.”

Source: La bâtarde: an autobiography

“TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.”

Source: Understanding media: the extensions of man

“Reading civilized the inner life.”

Reading Civilized Inner Life

Author:Mason Cooley

“Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.”

Share Inner Life Skillful Audacity

Author:Gertrude Stein

“When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.”

Thinking World Writing Whole Stories Values Easy Hours Common Practice Alive Solitude Quiet Letters Whole World Thoughtful Lap Inner Life

Author:Vivian Gornick

“Art is beauty, and every exposition of art, whether it be music, painting, or the drama, should be subservient to that one great end. As long as nature is a means to the attainment of beauty, so-called realism is necessary and permissable [sic], but it must be realism enhanced by idealism and uplifted by the spirit of an inner life or purpose.”

Should Mean Long Art Ends Spirit Purpose Beauty Music Painting Drama Art Is Realism Idealism Attainment Inner Life Subservient

Author:Julia Marlowe

“The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.”

My Own Great Things Inner Life

Book:The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.”

May Soul Body Earth Death Turns Elements Graves Dust Faculty Inner Life Daisies Paralyzed Kindred

Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin

“Happily, and thanks to God, there are orifices through which our inner life constantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath its pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost of these channels which lead the soul out of its invisible sanctuary; it is by speech that man communicates the secret converse which is his real life.”

Men Real Soul Secret Blood Speech Mouths Communicate Real Life Invisible Thanks Chiefs Sanctuary Inner Life Converses

Author:Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

“The inner life is the whole man, and forms all the worth of man.”

Men Whole Form Life Is Inner Life

Author:Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

“Music is our myth of the inner life.”

Music Music Is Myth Inner Life

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“Women are certainly more happy in this than we men: their employments occupy a smaller portion of their thoughts, and the earnest longing of the heart, the beautiful inner life of the fancy, always commands the greater part.”

Men Heart Beautiful Work Greater Longing Command Employment Fancy Portions Earnest Inner Life

Author:Friedrich Schleiermacher

“If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.”

Ifs Different Realizing Uniforms Tattoo Superficial Inner Life

Author:Ethan Hawke

“The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life.”

Culture Difficult Black Modern Europe Admire Ancestor Splits Modern Life Inner Life Equilibrium Unstable African Culture

Author:Leopold Sedar Senghor

“Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.”

Men May Action Choices Pay Attention Accepting Cases Consequence Responsible Investing Pay Attention Decision Making Inner Life

Author:W. H. Auden

“It wasn't until I began to work on my inner life and know myself that my life changed. Success really does begin within. The size and quality of your outer life is only limited by the size and quality of your inner life.”

Knows Doe Life Is Quality Changed Size Life Changing Inner Life

Author:Robin Sharma

“If your outer life is really a reflection of the quality of your inner life, then it's a brilliant move to spend at least an hour a day working on yourself.”

Ifs Moving Life Is Hours Quality Reflection Brilliant Inner Life Working On Yourself

Author:Robin Sharma

“I'm trying to learn something about making a balance between the inner life and the outer life. I wouldn't write if I didn't need to be making those discoveries, if I didn't feel the perpetual ignorance of being a human being.”

Ifs Needs Feels Writing Trying Humans Human Beings Ignorance Balance Discovery Perpetual Inner Life

Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“I would guess that the typical profile of a 'follower' is someone who is young and who feels marginalised, empty and pointless. They don't have an inner life.”

Feels Young Empty Followers Typical Pointless Inner Life Profile

Author:Oliver James

“To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: the introversion, interest directed within oneself toward one's own inner life of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values.”

People World Persons Two Values Force Interest Struggle Greater Journey Goes On Longing Oneself Fancy Privacy Urges Tangible Vigorous Inner Life Introversion

Book:Lectures on Russian Literature

Source: Lectures on Russian Literature

“Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.”

World Way Book Reading Source Life Changing Rooted Entering Book Reading Inner Life Seminary

Author:James Carroll

“A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.”

Writing Life Is Fire Draws Burning Visuals Consuming Inner Life Exhausting Great Poet Great Poetry

Book:Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875): late paintings

Source: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875): late paintings

“Conventional nudes based on classical originals could bear no burden of thought or inner life without losing their formal completeness.”

Bears Losing Originals Burden Conventional Formal Inner Life Completeness

Author:Kenneth Clark

“The theater let me dramatize inner struggles, the push-pull between the inner life and the world, the various selves I presented according to what each world required. And it let me use my body.”

World Self Use Body Struggle Let Me Theater Various Inner Life Inner Struggle

Author:Margo Jefferson

“Teaching is almost like an act of prayer for me. I feel that I am present at the intersection of people and ideas in a very holy way. There are not many places where successful adults can take a break from work or domestic issues and freely and safely explore their inner lives or global issues through an ethical lens.”

People Way Feels Ideas Prayer Break Issues Successful Teaching Holy Adults Ethical Lenses Inner Life Intersections Global Issues

Author:Erica Brown

“The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.”

Genius Structure Inner Life

Author:Alain de Botton

“I hope that people who don't live with animals will appreciate that each animal is a unique individual with a rich inner life.”

People Individual Animal Rich Unique Appreciate Inner Life Unique Individuals

Author:Linda Hoaglund

“The role of humankind is to use the cultural and social environment it has created to devise new global values.... Human relations with nature are intimately bound up in interpersonal relations and with the relation of the self and its inner life.”

Humans Self Use Values Social Roles Environment Relation Bounds Humankind Inner Life Human Relations Interpersonal Social Environment

Author:Daisaku Ikeda

“Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS.”

Needs Self Enjoy Can Do Effort Sea Gains Unions Psychics Inner Life Sparkling High Places

Author:Vernon Howard

“Seek first the Kingdom of God: that is, the first order of business is to transform one's own inner life, not the accumulation of external trappings of speculative knowledge.”

Firsts Order Kingdoms Kingdom Of God Accumulation Inner Life

Book:How To Read Kierkegaard

Source: How To Read Kierkegaard

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”

World Art Artist Results Vision Expression Art Is Great Art Inner Life Personal Vision

Book:Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February to 29 March 1981 : a selection from the exhibition Edward Hopper, the art and the artist held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York from 16 September 1980 to 25 January 1981

Source: Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February to 29 March 1981 : a selection from the exhibition Edward Hopper, the art and the artist held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York from 16 September 1980 to 25 January 1981

“That which is easy is bad for your inner life.”

Easy Inner Life

Author:G. I. Gurdjieff

“'Biblical worldview'. The term means literally a 'view of the world', a biblically informed perspective on all of reality. A worldview is like a mental map that tells you how to navigate the world effectively. It is the imprint of God's objective truth on our inner life.”

World Mean Reality Term Views Perspective Objectives Maps Biblical Worldview Inner Life Navigate Objective Truth Biblical Worldview

Author:Nancy Pearcey

“There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of the inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world.”

World Christian Paid Surrender Spheres Sooner Or Later Inner Life

Book:Ethics

Source: Ethics

“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”

Feels Looks Different Eye Beautiful Grows Cities Land Standing Soil Inward Inner Life Pavement

Author:Ricardo Montalban

“Flow is the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. The optimal state of inner experience is order in consciousness. This happens when we focus our attention (psychic energy) on realistic goals and when our skills match the challenges we face.”