Reflection Quotes

Your life is but a reflection of the predominance of your thoughts.

Strange, what being forced to slow down could do to a person.

External nature is only internal nature writ large.

I sit at my window gazing The world passes by, nods to me And is gone.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

The greatest events-they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

I like my quiet time. There is a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

For discovering one's true inner nature, I think one should try to take out some time, with quiet and relaxation, to think more inwardly and to investigate the inner world. That may help.

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action. Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

It is most unusual to return to a place that has changed in ways you yourself have altered.

At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

You let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting it, you relive it.

I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.

If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you're spending today?

I looked into the vast dome of blue emptiness that stretched out above me in all directions and the illusion was still there, the size and speed, and what information they were sending to mother earth.

Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

We must meditate, brothers. These grapes will yield no wine we tread upon it.

In stillness the muddied water returns to clarity.

Limit time to the present. Meditate upon your last hour.

We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them.

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.

I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.

Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by.

Every time I look in the mirror, I see that kid from Louisville, Kentucky, staring back at me. His name was Cassius Clay.

Each time I undertake to paint a picture I have a sensation of leaping into space. I never know whether I shall fall on my feet. It is only later that I begin to estimate more exactly the the effect of my work.

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

People relate to fighters so much because fighting reflects life.

For ever so our thoughtful hearts repeatOn fields of triumph dirges of defeat;And still we turn on gala-days to treadAmong the rustling memories of the dead.

No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

What did I know best that I had not written aboutand Lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most?

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,are your own nature reflected in them.

I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

Never by reflection, but only by doing is self- knowledge possible to one.

Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause - that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take the stance - backward.

There are always things that I think I wish I could have done better.

You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others.

When I think of ages past That have floated down the stream Of life and love and death, I feel how free it makes us To pass away.

It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

As we judge others so are we judged by others. The suspicious will always be tormented by suspicion.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange.

Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.

Reflective thinking is like the crock pot of the mind. It encourages your thoughts to simmer until they're done.

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

When you notice a fault in your neighbour, search for the same in yourself.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and of people who will see a world that I shall never know.