Quotes About Reflection

But the ultimate question is, Do the eyes receive other things than what the mind projects on them; aren't they really mirrors reflecting the mind's emissions? Perhaps we live in a world invented by ourselves.

Les faibles tirent une satisfaction morose à comparer leur infortune présente avec leur bonheur passé, et tentent ainsi de se prouver à eux-mêmes que leur vie n'a pas été manquée tout entière. (Troisième partie, ch. VI)

Eisenhower studied his mistakes. "We are learning something every day, and in general do not make the same mistake twice."9 Ike learned to be tougher with subordinates such as Fredendall. "Officers that fail must be ruthlessly weeded out," Eisenhower wrote his old friend Leonard Gerow. "Considerations of friendship, family, kindness, and nice personality have nothing to do with the problem.… You must be tough.

When her husband recovered, it was to shout abusively at her…. Later, when she reflected on it throughout the tedious courtroom proceedings, she realized this was the moment she had irrevocably determined to divorce her husband.

Nina could scarcely believe a house could be as quiet as the one on Washington Street. Although there were moments when she missed her children, her main response to living apart from her husband was relief…[H]er current solitude was not just a respite, it was a time to contemplate her future options. Nina marveled that she had choices to consider.

I long to see Christ's life formed in me. I want to become the person God had in mind when He created me.

God is not asking me to number my days to increase my pace but rather to examine my route, not to increase my efficiency but to see where I must make course corrections in heart, character, and actions.

the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.

In one of them I am sixteen or seventeen years old. I am wearing, under a jacket of the Assistance Publique, a torn sweater. My face is an oval, very pure; my nose is smashed, flattened by a punch in some forgotten fight. The look on my face is blasé, sad and warm, very serious. My hair was thick and unruly. Seeing myself at that age, I expressed my feelings almost aloud: "Poor little fellow, you've suffered.

If I have viewed them from a certain angle, it is because, seen from there, that is how they looked--which may be due to prismatic distortion, but which is therefore what they also are, though unaware of being it.

I love you as if you were in my belly. You're not my sweetheart, you're myself. My heart or my sex. A branch of me.

Humility can only be born out of humiliation

And he was apprehensive that some light, emanating from within his body, or from his true consciousness, might not be illuminating him, might not, in some way from inside the scaly carapace, give off a reflection of that true form and make him visible to men, who would then have to hunt him down.

?wi?to?? to smutek

when Divine seeks out the lost Alberto, she tries to portray him on herself and invents his smile with her own mouth. She puckers her muscles in what she thinks is the right way, the way–so she thinks when she feels her mouth twisting–that makes her resemble Alberto, until the day it occurs to her to do it in front of a mirror, and she realizes that her grimaces in no way resemble the smile we have already called starlike.)

Je hasarde une explication : écrire c'est le dernier recours quand on a trahi.

when at night I walk barefoot in my sandals across fields of snow at the Austrian border, I shall not flinch, but then, I say to myself, this painful moment must concur with the beauty of my life, I refuse to let this moment and all the others be waste matter; using their suffering, I project myself to the mind's heaven.

In her garret, Divine lived only on tea and grief.

Hij wilde snel bereiken wat voor hem weggelegd was, zodat de dood hem kon meenemen zonder dat hij ergens spijt van had.

Il ne savait pas encore que tout événement de notre vie n'a d'importance que la résonance qu'il trouve en nous, que le degré qu'il nous fait franchir vers l'ascétisme

Als er iets mis gaat, (...) gaat mijn geest, zodra ik, maar even de tijd krijg, (...), aan het werk om mij de al te wrede werkelijkheid te maskeren. Zo snel mogelijk maak ik voor mezelf een wereld waarin ik hofjonker ben, prins, koning of scheepsjongen (...). Het is alsof een handle wordt overgehaald en een valluik zich opent, waardoor ik in een fantasiewereld stort die wraak neemt. (...) het kan ook zijn dat in het dromen mijn roeping ligt.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

If we behave like those on the other side, then we are the other side. Instead of changing the world, all we'll achieve is a reflection of the one we want to destroy.

Je me disais : "Tu barreras dans l'Histoire de France de ta fille tout ce qui est exaltation à la guerre." Mais il aurait fallu tout barrer et comme j'avais malgré tout essayé, l'institutrice vint chez moi et me dit : "Que voulez-vous, monsieur Giono, comment pouvons-nous faire ?