Reflections Quotes

1. "I feel a hunger now- a real hunger-for letting the pool still itself & seeing the reflections."
Author: Anne Morrow Lindbergh

2. "Mangled heroes from both sides of the nameless conflict lay scattered in comical disregard. Valiant and dignified death poses embody a fiction found in the epic poems of minstrels and bards; fanciful reflections lacking merit in warfare. Athen briefly wondered if the ghosts of the proud knights haunted the battlefield; staring down at their ridiculous corpses with embarrassment or plotting appropriate punishments for the scavengers ransacking their empty husks. A life of chivalry and honor apparently culminated in the soiling of greaves while lying face down in your comrade's shit. The field reeked of more than just feces, blood, and vomit."
Author: Artemas Khan

3. "Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that is contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair. - about Spinoza"
Author: Bertrand Russell

4. "I'm a thinker. That is what I do, in great depth and detail, every waking moment of the day. I like to believe it's worthwhile. And yet, I can't help but recall something ... said to me once when I was young: "All of these things with which we occupy ourselves don't amount to much in the cosmic scale of things, do they? No matter how extensively we ponder any particular topic, there is really very little there"--Gilbertus Albans, Reflections in the Mirror of the Mind"
Author: Brian Herbert

5. "As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections."
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

6. "Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision."
Author: Charles Dickens

7. "I will not try to describe the beauty of life in a Swarm ? their zero-gravity globe cities and comet farms and thrust clusters, their micro-orbital forests and migrating rivers and the ten thousand colors and textures of life at Rendezvous Week. Suffice it to say that I believe the Ousters have done what Web humanity has not in the past millennia: evolved.While we live in our derivative cultures, pale reflections of Old Earth life, the Ousters have explored new dimensions of aesthetics and ethics and biosciences and art and all the things that must change and grow to reflect the human soul."
Author: Dan Simmons

8. "Thus you see having committed a Crime once, is a sad Handle to the committing of it again; whereas all the Regret, and Reflections wear off when the Temptation renews it self; had I not yielded to see him again, the Corrupt desire in him had worn off, and 'tis very probable he had never fallen into it, with any Body else, as I really believe he had not done before."
Author: Daniel Defoe

9. "And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife?[Reviewing Charles Babbage's Book, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830)]"
Author: David Brewster

10. "I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world."
Author: Don DeLillo

11. "What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace — and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now."
Author: Eckhart Tolle

12. "The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord."
Author: Edward Gibbon

13. "He leaned over her, the sun behind his head making a halo of gold, his face lit by the reflections off the water."
Author: Elizabeth Chandler

14. "I mean, if you were to find a shattered mirror, find all the pieces, all the shards and all the tiny chips, and have whatever skill and patience it took to put all that broken glass back together so that it was complete once again, the restored mirror would still be spiderwebbed with cracks, it would still be a useless glued version of its former self, which could show only fragmented reflections of anyone looking into it. Some things are beyond repair. And that was me."
Author: Elizabeth Wurtzel

15. "At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice."
Author: Ernesto Guevara

16. "We have no way of knowing, of course, why some are born in health and affluence, while others enter broken bodies or broken homes, or emerge into a realm of war or hunger. So we cannot give definite meaning to our place in the world, or to our neighbor's. But Plato's reflections should give us pause and invite both humility and hope. Humility, because if we chose our lot in life, there is every reason to suspect merit, and not disfavor, is behind disadvantaged birth. A blighted life may have been the more courageous choice--at least it was for Plato... So how can we feel pride in our own blessedness, or condescension in another's misfortune? And Plato's reflections should give us hope, because his myth reminds us that suffering can be sanctifying, that pain is not punishment ,and that the path to virtue is fraught with opposition."
Author: Fiona Givens

17. "Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life and it gets death: it wants Truth and it has to settle for an education; it craves love and gets only intermittent euphoria's with satieties. Samples, reflections and fractions are only tastes, not mouthfuls. A divine trick has been played on the human heart as if a violin teacher gave his pupil an instrument with one string missing. God kept a part of man's heart in Heaven, so that discontent would drive him back again to Him Who is Eternal Life, All-Knowing Truth and the Abiding Ecstasy of Love."
Author: Fulton J. Sheen

18. "Time has a way of reminding us of its perishable nature in the retrospect of our reflections."
Author: Gary Westfal

19. "Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning."
Author: George MacDonald

20. "(T)he essential thing is to keep in mind all the strata that go to make up the book. Archaic wisdom from the dawn of time, detached and systematic reflections of the Confucian school in the Chou era, pithy sayings from the heart of the people, subtle thoughts of the leading minds: all these disparate elements have harmonized to create the structure of the book as we know it."
Author: Hellmut Wilhelm

21. "On the edge of a tropical ocean, in a thousand reflections of the silver light of an invisible moon, among undulations of restless waters, ceaselessly changing...Among silent breakers, the tremors of the shining surface, in the swift flux and reflux martyrizing the patches of light, in the rendings of luminous loops and arcs, and lines, in the occultations and reappearances of dancing bursts of light being decomposed, recomposed, contracted, spread out, only to be re-distributed once more before me, with me, within me, drowned, and unendurably buffeted, my calm violated a thousand times by the tongues of infinity, oscillating, sinusoidally overrun by the multitude of liquid lines. enormous with a thousand folds, I was and I was not, I was caught, I was lost, I was in a state of complete ubiquity. The thousands upon thousands of rustlings were my own thousand shatterings."
Author: Henri Michaux

22. "Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same."
Author: Jack Kerouac

23. "Pride,' observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary."
Author: Jane Austen

24. "And he told stories about the stars above, about the earth below. He told them to make the night pass, and also because his heart was all reflections in which the soul of the world moved."
Author: Jean Giono

25. "Recipe for success: Multiple years of working hardFive containers of planning smartA blend of perseverance and sacrificeA wee bit sleep to pay the priceA mountain of self-confidenceAnd a huge boatload of common senseA wad of constructive connectionsAnd a regular pause for reflections"
Author: Joan Marques

26. "History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process"
Author: Jostein Gaarder

27. "You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There's this idea that monsters don't have reflections in a mirror. And what I've always thought isn't that monsters don't have reflections in a mirror. It's that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn't see myself reflected at all. I was like, "Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don't exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it."
Author: Junot Díaz

28. "The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide. Take the following examples: a man without faith seeking to find in science a substitute for his faith on which to build his life; a man unsatisfied by philosophy seeking an all-embracing universal truth in science; a spiritually shallow person growing aware of his own futility in the course of engaging in the endless reflections imposed by science. In every one of these cases, science begins as an object of blind idolatry and ends up as an object of hatred andcontempt. Disenchantment inevitably follows upon these and similar misconceptions. One question remains: What value can science possibly have when its limitations have become so painfully clear?"
Author: Karl Jaspers

29. "... I find in all the works of the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself - some resemblance, soe part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror."
Author: Katherine Mansfield

30. "Behind him there's still the mirror…a bit of infinity, which in its disinterest still holds their reflections safely in it."
Author: Laura Kasischke

31. "At the fruit of existence, there is a single concept of anonymity. This unknown concept is well known however. All one has to do is simply look behind the mirror for the answer. Yet, the answer won't come until the right question is asked. Because the illusions of reality are dressed in endless reflections, the blind will continue to be guided by the blind. The unknown concept is recognized to those who have tasted the fruit of existence, and as distant as the woman trying to grab Heaven from the reflection of an empty pond."
Author: Lionel Suggs

32. "...she gave thanks to the images of the stars for the joy she had had of the night, when the constellations shone in their myriad majesty, and moved like an army dresses in silver mail, marching from unknown victories to conquer in distant wars. She praised those bright reflections shimmering down in the pool."
Author: Lord Dunsany

33. "Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice."
Author: Mary Shelley

34. "The street lamps glowed like ripe oranges among the bare boughs. Below in the wet street their globes glimmered down and down, to drown in their own reflections."
Author: Mary Stewart

35. "All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action."
Author: Maurice Merleau Ponty

36. "But beyond the mind, beyond our thoughts, there is something we call the 'nature of the mind', the mind's true condition, which is beyond all limits. If it is beyond the mind, though, how can we approach an understanding of it? Let's take the example of a mirror. When we look into a mirror we see in it the reflected images of any objects that are in front of it; we don't see the nature of the mirror. But what do we mean by this 'nature of the mirror'? We mean its capacity to reflect, definable as its clarity, its purity, and its limpidity, which are indispensable conditions for the manifestation of reflections. This 'nature of the mirror' is not something visible, and the only way we can conceive of it is through the images reflected in the mirror. In the same way, we only know and have concrete experience of that which is relative to our condition of body, voice, and mind. But this itself is the way to understand their true nature."
Author: Namkhai Norbu

37. "They were the screams of riders torn apart by the twisted reflections of their own inner selves."
Author: Neal Shusterman

38. "He studied cities as women study their reflections."
Author: O. Henry

39. "Between going and staying the day wavers,in love with its own transparency.The circular afternoon is now a baywhere the world in stillness rocks.All is visible and all elusive,all is near and can't be touched.Paper, book, pencil, glass,rest in the shade of their names.Time throbbing in my temples repeatsthe same unchanging syllable of blood.The light turns the indifferent wallinto a ghostly theater of reflections.I find myself in the middle of an eye,watching myself in its blank stare.The moment scatters. Motionless,I stay and go: I am a pause."
Author: Octavio Paz

40. "The entrance to the natural EM senses is now guarded by artificially monstrous EM waves carrying every kind of pattern irrelevant to nature, from TV sitcoms to defense radar broadcasts. It is as though we have covered the whole surface of the globe with a slum of slovenly, impalpable constructions during the past eighty years or so since Marconi. They are literally skyscrapers in as much as they touch the ionosphere and are reflected from it. They are tenements full of the disorderly displays of sitcoms and the sterile reflections of military radar."
Author: Peter Redgrove

41. "We peep out, but what do we see, really? Mirror reflections of our own selves, our bloodless, feeble countenances, devoted to nothing in particular, insofar as I can fathom it. Death is very close, he thought. When you think in this manner. I can feel it, he decided. How near I am. Nothing is killing me; I have no enemy, no antagonist; I am merely expiring, like a magazine subscription: month by month."
Author: Philip K. Dick

42. "In those moments of moving through the streets with people who share one's beliefs comes the rare and magical possibility of a kind of populist communion...At such times it is as though the still small pool of one's own identity has been overrun by a great flood, bringing its own grand collective desires and resentments, scouring out that pool so thoroughly that one no longer feels fear or sees the reflections of oneself but is carried along on that insurrectionary surge. These moments when individuals find others who share their dreams, when fear is overwhelmed by idealism or by outrage, when people feel a strength that surprises them, are moments in which they become heroes—for what are heroes but those so motivated by ideals that fear cannot sway them, those who speak for us, those who have power for good? A person who never feels it is condemned to cynicism and isolation. In those moments everyone becomes a visionary, everyone becomes a hero."
Author: Rebecca Solnit

43. "The excellence and efficiency of any nation or of our global community at large is driven by the collective empowerment of individuals. Gross consumer waste, haphazard bureaucratic spending, and the careless consumption of natural resources are all reflections of the mismanagement of personal power common within the average citizen."
Author: Scott Edmund Miller

44. "In those days we saw every sort of object as though it were one of those tiny handkerchiefs from which a conjuror can produce silk scarfs, streamers, flags, and yards of ribbon. A cup of coffee became a kaleidoscope in which we could spend ages watching the mutable reflections of ceiling or chandelier."
Author: Simone De Beauvoir

45. "Yeah, reflections! The same, but different. Like twins - like blood brothers! And when you need something bad done, like punishment or revenge, you'll just ask me, and I will do it -"
Author: Sonya Hartnett

46. "This book is not the memoir of a contented man. It's not the poignant reflections of a white-haired guru who has finally figured out the secret to contentment. It's more like sweaty, bloody, hastily scribbled notes from a battlefield. I'm still struggling to escape the sinister fingers on this conspiracy. I'm still waging war against the discontentment that rages in my life. I can see contentment in the distance, like a hazy oasis, but I have to pick my way through a minefield to get there. I'm not the contented man God wants me to be, but I'm fighting to get there. I'm writing this book the hope that you'll join me in the fight."
Author: Stephen Altrogge

47. "You'll consider what you did wrong & bookend your reflections with hunger – no supper, no breakfast."
Author: Stephen King

48. "Break my mirror-heart into a thousand pieces my beloved, so that to the world i may proudly flaunt your thousand reflections"
Author: Sushrut A. Badhe

49. "Over your body the clouds goHigh, high and icilyAnd a little flat, as if theyFloated on a glass that was invisible.Unlike swans, Having no reflections;Unlike you, With no strings attached.All cool, all blue. Unlike youYou, there on your back,Eyes to the sky."
Author: Sylvia Plath

50. "Believe me, sir," he writes in the Reflections, "those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost."
Author: Yuval Levin

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