Quotes about Self-examination

Pride flees when we compare ourselves to God instead of [to] other people.

Prayeressness is the first sign of prideful independence. We begin to trim back our secret time with God when we're feeling great about ourselves, energetic and optimistic about our future, and confident about the path we're taking. It's the first sign that we're getting full of ourselves.

What I am looking for is not out there. It is in me.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Nevertheless, faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not been unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity; and whether ye have not been so desirous of the human praise that is accorded to these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed them.

I look singularly to myself, I am right nought;

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Rationalization begins with a look in the mirror.

Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination.

Holding the cup of life means looking critically at what we are living. This requires great courage, because when we start looking, we might be terrified by what we see. Questions may arise that we don't know how to answer. Doubts may come up about things we thought we were sure about. Fear may emerge from unexpected places.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.