reflection

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
ce4b9c0	We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we're wrong. Someone we trust.	trust love reflection	David Levithan
cde669d	All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.	intelligence reflection thinking walking	Friedrich Nietzsche
ed6b31a	Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.	gratefulness misfortunes reflection	Charles Dickens
f2c9684	Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?	autobiographical-quote poem poetry life inspirational charles-bukowski poetry-life-quote posthumous-modern-writer journalist writer-quotes satirical reflection poetry-quotes poet	Charles Bukowski
592b7d6	The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him	inspirational reflection	Viktor E. Frankl
ecf6ba7	If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.	reflection	Michel de Montaigne
27afe35	Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.	activist beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul fathers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community jealousy marine-life-conservation medical-missions motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action real-people rescuers search-and-rescue time true-beauty prayer writing compassion inspiration philosophy truth inspirational empathetic takers communicators perspectives inner-beauty tender givers loving charity mothers community friendships service reflection judgement vanity aging	Shannon L. Alder
7a2464e	I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.	loneliness poem poetry people beauty superficial-beauty bukowski appearance superficial superficiality classics self reflection beautiful mirror lonely self-esteem soul ugly classic	Charles Bukowski
0c73f5d	A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.	reflection	Henry David Thoreau
11c7b64	Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends.	understanding time friends friendship reflection	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
dc9d93f	Nico was devastatingly alone. He'd lost his big sister Bianca. He'd pushed away all other demigods who'd tried to get close to him. His experiences at Camp Half-Blood, in the Labyrinth and in Tartarus had left him scarred, afraid to trust anyone.	reflection reyna	Rick Riordan
ac389d2	Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace	solitude loneliness tranquility reflection peace	Dean Koontz
7586786	There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.	power-of-words reflection	E.L. Doctorow
39a8607	What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.	poem song life homage walt-whitman reflection	Walt Whitman
d1d9dea	The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have.	reflection mirror	Francesca Lia Block
fab69ac	If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.	library reflection readers	Alberto Manguel
0bb92fb	The moon is the reflection of your heart and moonlight is the twinkle of your love.	education happiness heart hope intelligence life love moon philosophy truth twinkle wisdom inspirational reflection knowledge moonlight	Debasish Mridha
bbd1987	She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.	reflection	Sylvia Plath
8cdd43d	The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you ... your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option - a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon - but he couldn't see one.	fate destiny life reflection nico-di-angelo	Rick Riordan
7dd0e82	The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.	secret shine sacred reflection soul	John O'Donohue
cb0603d	And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.	solitude performance reflection soul	Patrick Süskind
a26d463	Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.	reflection journaling	Pat Conroy
c371f90	It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.	nausea jean-paul sartre reflection ugly	Jean-Paul Sartre
e16de76	Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go--we have a long way--no hurry--just one step after the next--with a little Chautauqua for entertainment -- .Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.	how-to-climb-mountains rocky-mountains montana hiking outdoors mountains meditation reflection patience	Robert M. Pirsig
3629606	We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.	thoughts life truth self reflection acts severe judgement	Anaïs Nin
fd0d64f	"Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to."	hate history self-disgust cloud-atlas postmodern self-discovery reflection disgust postmodernism	David Mitchell
19a5af3	When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?	photography reflection	Philip K. Dick
358cf73	[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.	evolution humor truth jodi-picoult reflection quietness peace food	Jodi Picoult
24ab8a6	For God's sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.	humanity reflection machines thought monkeys	D.H. Lawrence
2a75fd7	Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror.	coldness reflection mirror	Irvine Welsh
5177284	Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.	history-of-mankind reflection	Charles MacKay
e756ac5	People change, though, especially after they are dead.	idealism identity redefine redefining impressions reputation reflection	Margaret Atwood
dbabc68	A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection -- not an invitation for hypnosis.	television mass-media symbols images reflection	Umberto Eco
3104f8b	How did it make you feel?	past reflection	Irvine Welsh
ad36d88	The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.	reflection	Barack Obama
ab30c8c	Reflection comes between us and every other person and object in the world. An object or a person can be reflected in so many different ways. Yet the heart of an object or the essence of the heart can never be reflected. All faith and creativity is the hunger to cross over this frontier, it is the desire for pure and total encounter and belonging. Love is an affair between a reflection and its object.	reflection	John O'Donohue
de435c6	Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.	world life reflection	Michael Cunningham
f136135	In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.	man passion reason rational impression irrational reflection intellect	Ford Madox Ford
b523f0d	We don't really communicate [...]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.	reflection	Irvine Welsh
c792ade	Your choices and decisions are a reflection of how well you've set and followed your priorities.	followed reflect priorities set well christian reflection decisions choices	Elizabeth George
3991672	Your attitude toward others, work, and your daily life is a reflection of your attitude toward God.	woman faith god life love reflect daily christian reflection walk	Elizabeth George
73fd47f	Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.	spirit character honesty reflection	Leo Tolstoy
f13e3ec	They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.	solitude drinking courage taverns withdrawal beer confession reflection quietness thought	Ellis Peters
fd3c002	I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window. Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second.	divorce reflection danger failure journey	Craig Ferguson
fb5b8cb	You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.	interesting reflection	Ruth Ozeki
b79ee3f	I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind. If all of human knowledge, everything that's known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all. Few people travel here. There's no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile. In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one's way out.	enlightenment philosophy high-country montana mountains wild meditation reflection consciousness awareness thought introspection	Robert M. Pirsig
01e067f	A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.	universe thoughful reflection	Terry Pratchett
311f947	Pauvres creatures! Si c'est un tort de les aimer, c'est bien le moins qu'on les plaigne. Vous plaignez l'aveugle qui n'a jamais vu les rayons du jour, le sourd qui n'a jamais entendu les accords de la nature, le muet qui n'a jamais pu rendre la voix de son ame, et, sous un faux pretexte de pudeur, vous ne voulez pas plaindre cette cecite du coeur, cette surdite de ame, ce mutisme de la conscience qui rendent folle la malheureuse affligee et qui la font malgre elle incapable de voir le bien, d'entendre le Seigneur et de parler la langue pure de l'amour et de la foi.	romance reflection	Alexandre Dumas-fils
ad0fc0f	This forest silence improves anyone.	silence reflection quiet	Robert M. Pirsig
e19a724	I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.	time thoughtfulness slow reflection thinking walking modernity technology	Rebecca Solnit
f8a91e2	She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.	mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness	Dennis Lehane
3369504	An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.	philosophy reflection	Russell Hoban
9e386aa	He's got a can up there,' Richard said.	wonderful reflection	John Steinbeck
7ec14d5	We think we've seen it all before, we think we know it all by heart.	spirituality reflection	Luanne Rice
81b7dd6	Shall I run back into the desert ... and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet.	reflection despair introspection	Saul Bellow
12766c3	And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.	life reflection	Tim Winton
700cb78	He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.	love reflection	Diana Gabaldon
deefcef	What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.	prayer nature sky reflection	Victor Hugo
1f822b0	To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, melees of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life!	depth reflection conscience desire soul	Victor Hugo
4b72103	If you would seek to find yourself look not in the mirror for there is but a shadow there' A stranger.... SILENIUS, ODES TO TRUTH	youself stranger-in-the-mirror stranger reflection shadow	Sidney Sheldon
ebdbd99	Just because your life isn't as awful as someone else's that doesn't mean it doesn't suck. You can't compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn't work. What might look like the perfect life - or even an okay life - to you might not be so okay for the person living it.	depression people human relationship sadness happiness life perfect-life feeling feel reflection suck comparison	Michael Thomas Ford
ff0b7e7	In the last few months, perhaps because he has had no one to speak to -- or at least no interlocutor who can respond with actual out-loud speech -- he has learned how to let different parts of his mind and heart speak within him as if they were different souls with their own arguments.	northwest-passage reflection soul	Dan Simmons
6abddac	Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.	moving-on love reflection	Samuel Beckett
26d5371	If the Romans could have fortified their cities the way the human brain fortifies itself, we'd still be wearing togas. The mind is an amazing piece of biomachinery, really. A serious threat presents itself at the gate and up fly the walls, standing firm in the face of earth-shaking revelations, ideological bullets, and plain old logic.	shield fact reflection	Kelley Armstrong
e442049	Let him who thinks war is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking honour and praise and valour and love of country ... Let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin-bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect that it is headless, and with the tattered clothing still draped round it; and let him realize how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all youth and joy and life into a fetid heap of hideous putrescence! Who is there who has known and seen who can say that victory is worth the death of even one of these?	war wisdom reflection introspection	Wade Davis
f5813b2	When you have a past, Vovonne, you'll realize what an odd thing it is. In the first place, there's whole chunks of it that have caved in: absolutely nothing left. Elsewhere, there's weeds that've grown haphazard, and you can't recognize anything there either. And then there's places that you think are so beautiful that you give them a fresh coat of paint every year, sometimes in one color, sometimes in another, and they end up not looking in the least like what they were. Not counting the things we thought very simple and unmysterious when they happened, but which years later we discover aren't so obvious, like sometimes you pass a thing every day and don't notice it and then all of a sudden you see it.	reflection	Raymond Queneau
9e4f708	Social mores, he argued, rules of protocol, concepts of rectitude and honor had no objective basis. They were only reflections of public and private fears.	reflection human-nature	Wade Davis
2b4cf17	Aloneness exaggerates our emotions and sensitivity.	solitude thought-life reflection	Beth Moore
46e2e79	...it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was.	illusion life life-is-a-dream reflection	Kate Atkinson
4fe8f18	Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.	racism blacks whites thoughtfulness race-relations reflection race guilt thought	James Baldwin
4fcd2fe	"The bride waits here," she said, running her hands along her hair, taking in her image but seeming to drift away. "This is the moment you think about what you're doing. Who you're choosing. Who you will love. If it's right, Eddie, this can be such a wonderful moment." --	marriage thoughts magic relationship love wedding reflection	Mitch Albom
7c069f8	Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.	reflection	William Raymond Manchester
ecbcd88	In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question - 'Have you not heard?' 'Do you consider?' 'Have you not seen?'. Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer. This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty; the Quran wanted people to develop a different kind of awarness.	quran meditation reflection	Karen Armstrong
7f701a0	Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.	motivational reflection introspection	Roger Zelazny
39da8a2	Nao ha porque te compares com os demais, e se a natureza te criou para morcego, nao deves aspirar ser avestruz. as vezes te consideras por demais esquisito e te reprovas por seguires caminhos diversos dos da maioria. Deixa-te disso. Contempla o fogo, as nuvens e quando surgirem pressagios e as vozes soarem em tua alma abandona-te a elas sem perguntares se isso convem.	love max-demian sinclair reflection	Hermann Hesse
67ea2b1	He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man.	reflection	Hilary Mantel
be29830	Time and time again one has seen, even in people not particularly given to reflection, that the best way of finding a solution is to let one's thoughts drift until the right moment comes to pounce, like a tiger taking its prey by surprise.	reflection patience	José Saramago
9b1603e	"It's only when you stop to think about it. I don't stop. - From "Morning"	humor motion reflection introspection	Donald Barthelme
2f2a032	The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.	present time history past reflection introspection memory	Iris Murdoch
833120d	Whenever we make one thing the central cause of a problem or the singular solution to that problem, the stakes are always too high to allow honest conversation or vulnerable reflection.	problem solution reflection	Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers
a4c3e69	As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world.	reading reflection	Doris Kearns Goodwin
6d0a129	Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough.	self-criticism ego reflection humility	Walter Isaacson
410428e	"Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. "I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do," she would write seven decades later."	cultivation taste reflection	Doris Kearns Goodwin

ce4b9c0

We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we're wrong. Someone we trust.

trust love reflection

David Levithan

cde669d

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

intelligence reflection thinking walking

Friedrich Nietzsche

ed6b31a

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

gratefulness misfortunes reflection

Charles Dickens

f2c9684

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

autobiographical-quote poem poetry life inspirational charles-bukowski poetry-life-quote posthumous-modern-writer journalist writer-quotes satirical reflection poetry-quotes poet

Charles Bukowski

592b7d6

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him

inspirational reflection

Viktor E. Frankl

ecf6ba7

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

reflection

Michel de Montaigne

27afe35

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

activist beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul fathers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community jealousy marine-life-conservation medical-missions motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action real-people rescuers search-and-rescue time true-beauty prayer writing compassion inspiration philosophy truth inspirational empathetic takers communicators perspectives inner-beauty tender givers loving charity mothers community friendships service reflection judgement vanity aging

Shannon L. Alder

7a2464e

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.

loneliness poem poetry people beauty superficial-beauty bukowski appearance superficial superficiality classics self reflection beautiful mirror lonely self-esteem soul ugly classic

Charles Bukowski

0c73f5d

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

reflection

Henry David Thoreau

11c7b64

Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends.

understanding time friends friendship reflection

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

dc9d93f

Nico was devastatingly alone. He'd lost his big sister Bianca. He'd pushed away all other demigods who'd tried to get close to him. His experiences at Camp Half-Blood, in the Labyrinth and in Tartarus had left him scarred, afraid to trust anyone.

reflection reyna

Rick Riordan

ac389d2

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace

solitude loneliness tranquility reflection peace

Dean Koontz

7586786

There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.

power-of-words reflection

E.L. Doctorow

39a8607

What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

poem song life homage walt-whitman reflection

Walt Whitman

d1d9dea

The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have.

reflection mirror

Francesca Lia Block

fab69ac

If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.

library reflection readers

Alberto Manguel

0bb92fb

The moon is the reflection of your heart and moonlight is the twinkle of your love.

education happiness heart hope intelligence life love moon philosophy truth twinkle wisdom inspirational reflection knowledge moonlight

Debasish Mridha

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She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.

reflection

Sylvia Plath

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The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you ... your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option - a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon - but he couldn't see one.

fate destiny life reflection nico-di-angelo

Rick Riordan

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The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.

secret shine sacred reflection soul

John O'Donohue

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And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.

solitude performance reflection soul

Patrick Süskind

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Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

reflection journaling

Pat Conroy

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It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.

nausea jean-paul sartre reflection ugly

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go--we have a long way--no hurry--just one step after the next--with a little Chautauqua for entertainment -- .Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.

how-to-climb-mountains rocky-mountains montana hiking outdoors mountains meditation reflection patience

Robert M. Pirsig

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We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.

thoughts life truth self reflection acts severe judgement

Anaïs Nin

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"Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to."

hate history self-disgust cloud-atlas postmodern self-discovery reflection disgust postmodernism

David Mitchell

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When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?

photography reflection

Philip K. Dick

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[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

evolution humor truth jodi-picoult reflection quietness peace food

Jodi Picoult

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For God's sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

humanity reflection machines thought monkeys

D.H. Lawrence

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Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror.

coldness reflection mirror

Irvine Welsh

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Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.

history-of-mankind reflection

Charles MacKay

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People change, though, especially after they are dead.

idealism identity redefine redefining impressions reputation reflection

Margaret Atwood

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A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection -- not an invitation for hypnosis.

television mass-media symbols images reflection

Umberto Eco

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How did it make you feel?

past reflection

Irvine Welsh

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The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.

reflection

Barack Obama

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Reflection comes between us and every other person and object in the world. An object or a person can be reflected in so many different ways. Yet the heart of an object or the essence of the heart can never be reflected. All faith and creativity is the hunger to cross over this frontier, it is the desire for pure and total encounter and belonging. Love is an affair between a reflection and its object.

reflection

John O'Donohue

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Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.

world life reflection

Michael Cunningham

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In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.

man passion reason rational impression irrational reflection intellect

Ford Madox Ford

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We don't really communicate [...]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.

reflection

Irvine Welsh

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Your choices and decisions are a reflection of how well you've set and followed your priorities.

followed reflect priorities set well christian reflection decisions choices

Elizabeth George

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Your attitude toward others, work, and your daily life is a reflection of your attitude toward God.

woman faith god life love reflect daily christian reflection walk

Elizabeth George

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Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.

spirit character honesty reflection

Leo Tolstoy

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They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.

solitude drinking courage taverns withdrawal beer confession reflection quietness thought

Ellis Peters

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I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window. Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second.

divorce reflection danger failure journey

Craig Ferguson

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You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.

interesting reflection

Ruth Ozeki

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I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind. If all of human knowledge, everything that's known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all. Few people travel here. There's no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile. In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one's way out.

enlightenment philosophy high-country montana mountains wild meditation reflection consciousness awareness thought introspection

Robert M. Pirsig

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A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.

universe thoughful reflection

Terry Pratchett

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Pauvres creatures! Si c'est un tort de les aimer, c'est bien le moins qu'on les plaigne. Vous plaignez l'aveugle qui n'a jamais vu les rayons du jour, le sourd qui n'a jamais entendu les accords de la nature, le muet qui n'a jamais pu rendre la voix de son ame, et, sous un faux pretexte de pudeur, vous ne voulez pas plaindre cette cecite du coeur, cette surdite de ame, ce mutisme de la conscience qui rendent folle la malheureuse affligee et qui la font malgre elle incapable de voir le bien, d'entendre le Seigneur et de parler la langue pure de l'amour et de la foi.

romance reflection

Alexandre Dumas-fils

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This forest silence improves anyone.

silence reflection quiet

Robert M. Pirsig

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I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.

time thoughtfulness slow reflection thinking walking modernity technology

Rebecca Solnit

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She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.

mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness

Dennis Lehane

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An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.

philosophy reflection

Russell Hoban

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He's got a can up there,' Richard said.

wonderful reflection

John Steinbeck

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We think we've seen it all before, we think we know it all by heart.

spirituality reflection

Luanne Rice

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Shall I run back into the desert ... and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet.

reflection despair introspection

Saul Bellow

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And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

life reflection

Tim Winton

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He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.

love reflection

Diana Gabaldon

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What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.

prayer nature sky reflection

Victor Hugo

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To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, melees of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life!

depth reflection conscience desire soul

Victor Hugo

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If you would seek to find yourself look not in the mirror for there is but a shadow there' A stranger.... SILENIUS, ODES TO TRUTH

youself stranger-in-the-mirror stranger reflection shadow

Sidney Sheldon

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Just because your life isn't as awful as someone else's that doesn't mean it doesn't suck. You can't compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn't work. What might look like the perfect life - or even an okay life - to you might not be so okay for the person living it.

depression people human relationship sadness happiness life perfect-life feeling feel reflection suck comparison

Michael Thomas Ford

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In the last few months, perhaps because he has had no one to speak to -- or at least no interlocutor who can respond with actual out-loud speech -- he has learned how to let different parts of his mind and heart speak within him as if they were different souls with their own arguments.

northwest-passage reflection soul

Dan Simmons

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Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.

moving-on love reflection

Samuel Beckett

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If the Romans could have fortified their cities the way the human brain fortifies itself, we'd still be wearing togas. The mind is an amazing piece of biomachinery, really. A serious threat presents itself at the gate and up fly the walls, standing firm in the face of earth-shaking revelations, ideological bullets, and plain old logic.

shield fact reflection

Kelley Armstrong

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Let him who thinks war is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking honour and praise and valour and love of country ... Let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin-bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect that it is headless, and with the tattered clothing still draped round it; and let him realize how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all youth and joy and life into a fetid heap of hideous putrescence! Who is there who has known and seen who can say that victory is worth the death of even one of these?

war wisdom reflection introspection

Wade Davis

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When you have a past, Vovonne, you'll realize what an odd thing it is. In the first place, there's whole chunks of it that have caved in: absolutely nothing left. Elsewhere, there's weeds that've grown haphazard, and you can't recognize anything there either. And then there's places that you think are so beautiful that you give them a fresh coat of paint every year, sometimes in one color, sometimes in another, and they end up not looking in the least like what they were. Not counting the things we thought very simple and unmysterious when they happened, but which years later we discover aren't so obvious, like sometimes you pass a thing every day and don't notice it and then all of a sudden you see it.

reflection

Raymond Queneau

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Social mores, he argued, rules of protocol, concepts of rectitude and honor had no objective basis. They were only reflections of public and private fears.

reflection human-nature

Wade Davis

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Aloneness exaggerates our emotions and sensitivity.

solitude thought-life reflection

Beth Moore

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...it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was.

illusion life life-is-a-dream reflection

Kate Atkinson

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Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.

racism blacks whites thoughtfulness race-relations reflection race guilt thought

James Baldwin

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"The bride waits here," she said, running her hands along her hair, taking in her image but seeming to drift away. "This is the moment you think about what you're doing. Who you're choosing. Who you will love. If it's right, Eddie, this can be such a wonderful moment." --

marriage thoughts magic relationship love wedding reflection

Mitch Albom

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Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.

reflection

William Raymond Manchester

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In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question - 'Have you not heard?' 'Do you consider?' 'Have you not seen?'. Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer. This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty; the Quran wanted people to develop a different kind of awarness.

quran meditation reflection

Karen Armstrong

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Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.

motivational reflection introspection

Roger Zelazny

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Nao ha porque te compares com os demais, e se a natureza te criou para morcego, nao deves aspirar ser avestruz. as vezes te consideras por demais esquisito e te reprovas por seguires caminhos diversos dos da maioria. Deixa-te disso. Contempla o fogo, as nuvens e quando surgirem pressagios e as vozes soarem em tua alma abandona-te a elas sem perguntares se isso convem.

love max-demian sinclair reflection

Hermann Hesse

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He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man.

reflection

Hilary Mantel

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Time and time again one has seen, even in people not particularly given to reflection, that the best way of finding a solution is to let one's thoughts drift until the right moment comes to pounce, like a tiger taking its prey by surprise.

reflection patience

José Saramago

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"It's only when you stop to think about it. I don't stop. - From "Morning"

humor motion reflection introspection

Donald Barthelme

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The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.

present time history past reflection introspection memory

Iris Murdoch

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Whenever we make one thing the central cause of a problem or the singular solution to that problem, the stakes are always too high to allow honest conversation or vulnerable reflection.

problem solution reflection

Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers

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As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world.

reading reflection

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough.

self-criticism ego reflection humility

Walter Isaacson

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"Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. "I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do," she would write seven decades later."

cultivation taste reflection

Doris Kearns Goodwin