Quotes About Reflection

both heartened and chastened by contact with open and fearless goodwill.

The old man's dying was painless and feather-light, all the substance of his once sharp and vigorous mind gone on before; but it was slow. The fading candle flame did not flicker, only dimmed in perfect stillness second by second, so mysteriously that they missed the moment when the last spark withdrew, and only knew he was gone when they began to realise that the prints of age were smoothing themselves out gently from his face.

for every untimely death, every man cut down in his vigour and strength without time for repentance and reparation, is one corpse too many.

Did you ever feel, Hugh, that it might be better to let even ill alone, wondered Cadfael ruefully, rather than let loose worse?

Brother Cadfael was standing in the middle of his walled herb-garden, looking pensively

What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself.

more impenetrable solitudes

The key to surviving and thriving in leadership often rests in increasing our self-awareness.

Much of what you learn through times of adversity will become lifelong wisdom, and these truths will sustain you throughout your ministry.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.

We believe that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.

Si longue que soit la vie, elle n'est qu'un long retard de la mort

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others' minds.

One writes to make a home for oneself on paper, in time, in other's minds.

My contention is that while progress in some of the great matters of human concern has been long proceeding in accordance with the law of a rapidly increasing geometric progression, progress in the other matters of no less importance has advanced only at the rate of an arithmetical progression or at best at the rate of some geometric progression of relatively slow growth. To see it and to understand it we have to pay the small price of a little observation and a little meditation.

41. "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: Namely, to believe everything, or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Charles Darwin, on first seeing these waves breaking on Tierra del Fuego in 1833, wrote in his diary:

At the thought of losing Grus, a puppy born a year before on the Endurance, Macklin reflected:

In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting.

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,And in a little while our lips are dumb.Let us alone. What is it that will last?All things are taken from us, and becomePortions and parcels of the dreadful Past.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

A still small voice spake unto me,"Thou art so full of misery,Were it not better not to be?"