“Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.”

“I don't need my head examined, but where were you when I married my second husband. Sheesh.”

“I must learn more about these people―try to understand them, put myself in their place. No, instead I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who anyone else is.”

“Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.”

“I say, if your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.”

“I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.”

“I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.”

“If you, the citizen, deliberately vote for someone who won't give you healthcare over someone who will, you need to have your head examined. Except you can't afford to have your head examined.”

“.. for most painters nowadays [1954] examination is self-examination – this is all that we are accustomed to – while the relation to the audience is a social matter. And it is our pictures, not ourselves, that live the social life and meet the public.”

“In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.”