Bell Hooks Quotes

One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I was inspired to spend an entire year - my 65th year - reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu's messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Prison gives you time to reflect.

When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.

What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.

We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.

When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time

I am alone and my spiritual journey is my experience.' This is the real experience of freedom and independence. Then we begin to see that being alone is a very beautiful thing. Nobody is obstructing our vision. We have complete panoramic vision.

Self-reflection, or - what comes to the same thing - the urge to individuation, gathers together what is scattered and multifarious and exalts it to the original of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way our existence as separate beings, our former ego nature, is abolished, the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up.

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.

Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

In a way, a jail is a place where you can rest, read books and live with yourself.

We read books to find out who we are.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.

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

Loneliness in travel directs you and tells you about yourself. You don't become lonely unless you're alone.

The soul inside me is the last foreign language I'm learning.

We are reaching deep within ourselves to adjust the master knob.

‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the Great Silence alone.