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.	love reflection trust	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?	charles-bukowski inspirational journalist life poem poet poetry poetry-life-quote poetry-quotes posthumous-modern-writer reflection satirical writer-quotes autobiographical-quote	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 aging beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul charity communicators community compassion empathetic fathers friendships givers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community inner-beauty inspiration inspirational jealousy judgement loving marine-life-conservation medical-missions mothers motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action perspectives philosophy prayer real-people reflection rescuers search-and-rescue service takers tender time true-beauty truth vanity writing	Shannon L. Alder
7a2464e	I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.	appearance beautiful beauty bukowski classic classics loneliness lonely mirror people poem poetry reflection self self-esteem soul superficial superficial-beauty superficiality ugly	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.	friends friendship reflection time understanding	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	loneliness peace reflection solitude tranquility	Dean Koontz
7586786	There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.	power-of-words reflection	E.L. Doctorow
d1d9dea	The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have.	mirror reflection	Francesca Lia Block
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.	homage life poem reflection song walt-whitman	Walt Whitman
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 readers reflection	Alberto Manguel
0bb92fb	The moon is the reflection of your heart and moonlight is the twinkle of your love.	education happiness heart hope inspirational intelligence knowledge life love moon moonlight philosophy reflection truth twinkle wisdom	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.	destiny fate life nico-di-angelo reflection	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.	reflection sacred secret shine 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.	performance reflection solitude soul	Patrick Süskind
a26d463	Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.	journaling reflection	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.	jean-paul nausea reflection sartre 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.	hiking how-to-climb-mountains meditation montana mountains outdoors patience reflection rocky-mountains	Robert M. Pirsig
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."	cloud-atlas disgust hate history postmodern postmodernism reflection self-discovery self-disgust	David Mitchell
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.	acts judgement life reflection self severe thoughts truth	Anaïs Nin
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 food humor jodi-picoult peace quietness reflection truth	Jodi Picoult
19a5af3	When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?	photography reflection	Philip K. Dick
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 machines monkeys reflection thought	D.H. Lawrence
2a75fd7	Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror.	coldness mirror reflection	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 impressions redefine redefining reflection reputation	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.	images mass-media reflection symbols television	Umberto Eco
3104f8b	How did it make you feel?	past reflection	Irvine Welsh
de435c6	Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.	life reflection world	Michael Cunningham
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
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
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.	impression intellect irrational man passion rational reason reflection	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.	choices christian decisions followed priorities reflect reflection set well	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.	character honesty reflection spirit	Leo Tolstoy
3991672	Your attitude toward others, work, and your daily life is a reflection of your attitude toward God.	christian daily faith god life love reflect reflection walk woman	Elizabeth George
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.	beer confession courage drinking quietness reflection solitude taverns thought withdrawal	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.	danger divorce failure journey reflection	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.	awareness consciousness enlightenment high-country introspection meditation montana mountains philosophy reflection thought wild	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.	reflection thoughful universe	Terry Pratchett
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.	dead depression family friendship grief lost melancholy mental-illness mourning professional reflection regret remember sad the-past	Dennis Lehane
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.	modernity reflection slow technology thinking thoughtfulness time walking	Rebecca Solnit
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.	reflection romance	Alexandre Dumas-fils
ad0fc0f	This forest silence improves anyone.	quiet reflection silence	Robert M. Pirsig
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.	despair introspection reflection	Saul Bellow
7ec14d5	We think we've seen it all before, we think we know it all by heart.	reflection spirituality	Luanne Rice
9e386aa	He's got a can up there,' Richard said.	reflection wonderful	John Steinbeck
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
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
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.	nature prayer reflection sky	Victor Hugo
700cb78	He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.	love reflection	Diana Gabaldon
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	reflection shadow stranger stranger-in-the-mirror youself	Sidney Sheldon
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!	conscience depth desire reflection soul	Victor Hugo
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?	introspection reflection war wisdom	Wade Davis
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
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.	comparison depression feel feeling happiness human life people perfect-life reflection relationship sadness suck	Michael Thomas Ford
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.	fact reflection shield	Kelley Armstrong
6abddac	Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.	love moving-on reflection	Samuel Beckett
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
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.	blacks guilt race race-relations racism reflection thought thoughtfulness whites	James Baldwin
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
2b4cf17	Aloneness exaggerates our emotions and sensitivity.	reflection solitude thought-life	Beth Moore
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." --	love magic marriage reflection relationship thoughts wedding	Mitch Albom
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.	meditation quran reflection	Karen Armstrong
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.	human-nature reflection	Wade Davis
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 reflection sinclair	Hermann Hesse
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.	patience reflection	José Saramago
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
7f701a0	Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.	introspection motivational reflection	Roger Zelazny
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 reflection taste	Doris Kearns Goodwin
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.	ego humility reflection self-criticism	Walter Isaacson
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.	history introspection memory past present reflection time	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 reflection solution	Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers
9b1603e	"It's only when you stop to think about it. I don't stop. - From "Morning"	humor introspection motion reflection	Donald Barthelme

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.

love reflection trust

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?

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

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

Shannon L. Alder

7a2464e

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

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

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.

friends friendship reflection time understanding

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

loneliness peace reflection solitude tranquility

Dean Koontz

7586786

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

power-of-words reflection

E.L. Doctorow

d1d9dea

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

mirror reflection

Francesca Lia Block

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.

homage life poem reflection song walt-whitman

Walt Whitman

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 readers reflection

Alberto Manguel

0bb92fb

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

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

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.

destiny fate life nico-di-angelo reflection

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.

reflection sacred secret shine 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.

performance reflection solitude soul

Patrick Süskind

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

journaling reflection

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.

jean-paul nausea reflection sartre 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.

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

Robert M. Pirsig

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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."

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

David Mitchell

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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.

acts judgement life reflection self severe thoughts truth

Anaïs Nin

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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 food humor jodi-picoult peace quietness reflection truth

Jodi Picoult

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When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?

photography reflection

Philip K. Dick

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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 machines monkeys reflection thought

D.H. Lawrence

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

coldness mirror reflection

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 impressions redefine redefining reflection reputation

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.

images mass-media reflection symbols television

Umberto Eco

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How did it make you feel?

past reflection

Irvine Welsh

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

life reflection world

Michael Cunningham

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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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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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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.

impression intellect irrational man passion rational reason reflection

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.

choices christian decisions followed priorities reflect reflection set well

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.

character honesty reflection spirit

Leo Tolstoy

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

christian daily faith god life love reflect reflection walk woman

Elizabeth George

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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.

beer confession courage drinking quietness reflection solitude taverns thought withdrawal

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.

danger divorce failure journey reflection

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.

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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.

reflection thoughful universe

Terry Pratchett

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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.

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

Dennis Lehane

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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.

modernity reflection slow technology thinking thoughtfulness time walking

Rebecca Solnit

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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.

reflection romance

Alexandre Dumas-fils

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This forest silence improves anyone.

quiet reflection silence

Robert M. Pirsig

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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.

despair introspection reflection

Saul Bellow

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

reflection spirituality

Luanne Rice

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

reflection wonderful

John Steinbeck

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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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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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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.

nature prayer reflection sky

Victor Hugo

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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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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

reflection shadow stranger stranger-in-the-mirror youself

Sidney Sheldon

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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!

conscience depth desire reflection soul

Victor Hugo

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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?

introspection reflection war wisdom

Wade Davis

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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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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.

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

Michael Thomas Ford

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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.

fact reflection shield

Kelley Armstrong

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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.

love moving-on reflection

Samuel Beckett

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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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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.

blacks guilt race race-relations racism reflection thought thoughtfulness whites

James Baldwin

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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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Aloneness exaggerates our emotions and sensitivity.

reflection solitude thought-life

Beth Moore

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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." --

love magic marriage reflection relationship thoughts wedding

Mitch Albom

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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.

meditation quran reflection

Karen Armstrong

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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.

human-nature reflection

Wade Davis

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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 reflection sinclair

Hermann Hesse

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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.

patience reflection

José Saramago

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

introspection motivational reflection

Roger Zelazny

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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 reflection taste

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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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.

ego humility reflection self-criticism

Walter Isaacson

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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.

history introspection memory past present reflection time

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 reflection solution

Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers

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

humor introspection motion reflection

Donald Barthelme