Quotes About Reflection

But after I had imployed some years in thus studying the Book of the World, and endeavouring to get experience, I took one day a resolution to study also within my self, and to employ all the forces of my minde in the choice of the way I was to follow: which (me thought) succeeded much better, then if I had never estranged my self from my Country, or from my Books.

hay acaso algo más íntimo o más interior que el dolor?

We should totally focus the vision of natural intelligence on the smallest and easiest things, and we should dwell on them for a long time, so long, until we have become accustomed to intuiting the truth distinctly and perspicuously.

This is so much the case that the will is the chief basis for my understanding that I bear a certain image and likeness of God.

I was aware that the reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of thoughts.

Cuando la conciencia del individuo queda reducida a reflejar la conciencia colectiva del grupo social, el pensamiento se hace siervo de los dogmas colectivos; el hombre se recluye en el organismo superior de la nación o clase, y el concepto de lo humano se disuelve

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.

During the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theater of the world.

Pour examiner la vérité, il est besoin, une fois dans sa vie, de mettre toutes choses en doute autant qu'il se peut.

Leer buenos libros es como conversar con las mejores mentes del pasado.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

The poet advises: 'Read me. Read me again.' He does not always come away unscathed from his page, but like the poor, he knows how to make use of an olive's eternity.

Who would dare to say that what we have destroyed was worth a hundred times more than what we had dreamt and ceaselessly transfigured in murmuring to the ruins?

A time when an exhausted sky sinks deep into the earth and man in his death agony is scorned on both sides.

What comes into the world to disturb nothing merits neither attention nor patience.

Ne t'attarde pas à l'ornière des résultats. ( Don't linger in the rut of success )

Entre les deux coups de feu qui décidèrent de son destin, il eut le temps d'appeler une mouche : Madame.

Si l'homme parfois ne fermait pas souverainement les yeux, il finirait par ne plus voir ce qui vaut d'être regardé.

La poésie est de toutes les eaux claires celle qui s'attarde le moins aux reflets de ses ponts

Unforeseen universe, what oceans may lead to their shores the navigators of silence?

It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think.