Quotes About Reflection

you know, one never realises how much one has changed with the years. We carry an inward image of ourselves, I think, which remains forever the same.

Who wants to live with one foot in hell just for the sake of nostalgia? Our time is forever now!

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

They pick all of us out, and then they decide, they computerize, decide if they like it or don't like it, and then they go home, and then they come back again because they're not sure what they saw.

ARAH lay on a quilt under a tree. The darkness was all around her, but through the branches she could see one bright star. It was comfortable to look at.

I couldn't help but think hard about what you're supposed to do when the facts seem to be leading you into danger.

I have seen much to hate here--much to forgive, But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.

When your heart would ache to hear Other men's tongues repeating Those same light phrases that jest and jeer At a friend now grown so dear--so dear. Strange to remember long ago When a friend was almost a foe.

How old, how commonplace To look upon the face Of your first-born, and glory in your lot. To look upon his face And understand your place Among the unknown dead in churchyards lying, To see the reason why You lived and why you die-- Even to find a certain grace in dying.

Everyone who'd lost something of crucial importance wished he or she could go back to the moment when it was still theirs. The wish was so powerful it seemed it might reverse the direction of time. It bore apparitions and ghosts.

But there was a last time. An unforeseen and uncommemorated last time. I don't remember it. That, more than anything, describes aging to me—the letting go of one activity after the next, with no fanfare. Just realizing later that the last time has come and gone,

Writing is waiting. That's the whole of it. If you sit in your chair not doing anything else for long enough, the answer will come. You do have to be in your chair, though, ready to write it down.

But there was a last time. An unforeseen and uncommemorated last time. I don't remember it. That, more than anything, describes aging to me—the letting go of one activity after the next, with no fanfare. Just realizing later that the last time has come and gone," Agnes said.

It was a red flag, Polly and Robert decided, not to have old friends.

She'd been raised not to dwell on such injustices, because dwelling made it difficult to be good company in the present. Perhaps it was necessary to dwell, though, even to be obsessive, for any real change to occur. Plenty of Quakers dwelled—the American Friends Service Committee, for example—and hadn't that done the world a lot of good? When she got back to Haverford, she'd volunteer for something to do with animals—if Dick could spare her.

Polly was always shocked to learn how complacent she was, when she was certain of her good intentions.

Silence is so steadfast, you know. It is so ample, after all.

Each poet creates an expatriate space, a slightly skewed domain where things are freshly felt because they are freshly said.

She stared at it for a long time, seeing the rabbit in the moon, and thoughts of Watership Down, which she'd read as a child, drifted into her head.

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich...

It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose!

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.