Quotes About Reflection

Now I understood what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.

Ammachi, when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I've lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia, and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.

As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled. She

But God's time isn't the same as hers. God's calendar isn't the one hanging in her kitchen. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. It's pointless chastising herself for not rescuing her mother sooner. Happened is happened, she thinks. The past is unreliable, and only the future is certain, and she must look to it with faith that the pattern will be revealed.

The God who never interferes with drownings or train wrecks likes to peer in on the human experiment at such moments of reckoning, touching the scene with a little celestial light.

They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize that no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.

the retrospectoscope, that handy tool of the wags and pundits, the conveners of the farce we call M&M—morbidity and mortality conference—will pronounce your decision right or wrong. Life, too, is like that.

I am so behind that yesterday catches up with tomorrow.

sometimes we have to "live the question," not push for the answer.

What did it matter? We are dying while we are living. We are old even when we're young. We are clinging to life even as we resign ourselves to leaving it.

He didn't disagree that God may have other plans for me, but he said sometimes we have to 'live the question,' not push for the answer.

You can confide in quiet people. They make way for one's thoughts.

Big Ammachi was shocked to see how thin she had become, her hair suddenly white at the temples; it was such a troubling sight in one so young.

question," not push for the answer.

After a long time, she says, "You won't make my mistake, will you?" Her gaze is soft and smiling once more, her wistful expression gone. "What mistake is that . . . Celeste?" "The mistake, Digby, of choosing to see more in your future mate than the evidence has already suggested.

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.

It is a matter of shame that in the morning the birds should be awake earlier than you.

Have an earnestness for death and you will have life.

The few weeks I have had at my disposal have not given me the chance to revive and to work through my old memories in such a way that I might offer you a solid introduction into the psychic life of Indians.

I have not forgotten about the REO Speedwagon incident. No more of that. Never.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.' " "I figured you'd be in.

I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It's not sadness, though it may sound like it. I'm thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it's hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.

All I've been working on is napping, and maybe being kinder to others, to myself.