Quotes About Reflection

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only guide it by taking thought.

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.

Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Russell is a Platonic dialogue in himself.

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

We all know Aesop's fable of the dog who dropped a piece of meat to grasp at its reflection in the water. We must not, however, judge too severely of error. In the initial stages of mental progress, error in symbolic reference is the discipline which promotes imaginative freedom.

If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.

I slept very comfortably with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head

Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.

Ah, what shall I be at fifty, should nature keep me alive, if I find the world so bitter when I am but twenty-five?

Es curioso, normalmente el tiempo recorta el tamaño de los recuerdos y los hace menos impresionantes en su alegría o en su tristeza".

de los placeres de un solitario, el más grande es hacer el ridículo sin que nadie lo vea.

Susan: ¡fue ayer!, ayer cuando conoció a un peruano en Londres y se casó con él en Lima, ahora se casaba en Londres con un peruano conocido en Lima. Pensar que Juan Lucas estaba en Londres cuando ella salía con Santiago…

Any one who sits in reverie thus, of course, may see similar ridiculous pictures when the will no longer guides construction. The incongruities of dreams are thus explained.

Our thoughts make spirals in their world.