Quotes about Self-reflection

Blaming others wouldn't do. Only when I began to see the world's ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, sin, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior.

Conversion is seeing ourselves, and the ordinary people in our families, our classrooms, and on the job, in a new light. Can it be that these very people—even the difficult, unbearable ones—are the ones God has given us, so that together we might find salvation?

The concept of sin does not exist so that people who may need therapy more than theology can be convinced that they are evil and beyond hope. It is meant to encourage people to believe that they are made in the image of God and to act accordingly. Hope is the heart of it, and the ever-present possibility of transformation.

Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only their conduct we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.

One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakens.

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

I think you'll see that my life story is worthy of a novel, because of my sins more than my virtues.

We run away all the time to avoid coming face to face with ourselves.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of Ewer, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at st have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.