Quotes About Reflection

More than anything, memory resembles a library in alphabetical disorder, and with no collected works by anyone.

the present engenders the past far more energetically than the other way around.

VIII O when so much has been and gone behind you—grief, to say the least— expect no help from anyone. Board a train, get to the coast. It's wider and it's deeper. This superiority's not a thing of joy especially. Mind you, if one has to feel as orphans do, better in places where the view stirs somehow and cannot sting.

It is a virtue, I came to believe long ago, not to make a meal out of one's emotional life. There's always enough work to do, not to mention that there's world enough outside.

There are places in which things don't change. These are a substitute for one's memory.

A bird may twitter a better song. But should you consider abortion wrong or that the quacks ask too high a fee, come to this wall, and see.

Scratch on, my pen: let's mark the white the way it marks us.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours." —

If Meditations is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins.

To have another life, one ought to be able to wrap up the first one, and the job should be done neatly.

No poem is ever written for its story line's sake only, just as no life is lived for the sake of an obituary. - Joseph Brodsky

un romanzo o una poesia sono il prodotto di una reciproca solitudine – quella di uno scrittore e quella di un lettore.

The upper lip is like a groom, to wit: The lower lip is like his fiancee. But that which splits in two will surely split into two hundred just as easily. And everything that's been twofold is then accountable, is then no longer moot.

We have, all of us, more reasons for staying than for marching. What's the point in marching if you are only going to catch up with a very sad tune?

No one should feel guilty about the past. Unless they're not doing anything about the present.

Let me have clear thoughts, clear speech, and a good path to walk this day," I prayed as I watched the rising sun.

Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.

The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy — not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss.

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.

Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late.

If you travel far enough, you'll eventually meet yourself.

What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.