Quotes About Reflection

We want to learn the lesson and not repeat the experience. But in truth, we do not like to look too closely at what we did; our introspection is limited. Our natural response is to blame others, circumstances, or a momentary lapse of judgment.

Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection.

For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be. —Xenophon (430?–355? B.C.)

There are very few men—and they are the exceptions—who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.   CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

Life has more meaning in the face of Death.

Space we can recover, time never. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down. You keep the notebook by your bed, careful to record ideas that come in those moments of fringe awareness—just before falling asleep, or just upon waking.

What I fear is not the enemy's strategy but our own mistakes.

What limits individuals as well as nations is the inability to confront reality, to see things for what they are. As we grow older, we become more rooted in the past. Habit takes over. Something that has worked for us before becomes a doctrine, a shell to protect us from reality. Repetition replaces creativity.

As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency?

We think we are judging the younger generation in an objective manner, but we are merely succumbing to an illusion of perspective. It is also true that we are probably experiencing some hidden envy of their youth and mourning the loss of our own.

Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience--the best school of all. You will develop your own strategic muscles instead of depending on other people's theories and books.

For my life, I confess to you, feels to me today somewhat narrow and circumscribed.

The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know!

my wants are few, and at any rate I had peace and quietness and wasn't always being asked to come along and do something. And I've got such an active mind - always occupied, I assure you!

And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear, not only to others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence.

here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, THE life which is mine and which will not let me go.

Such a rich chapter it had been, when one came to look back on it all! With illustrations so numerous and so very highly coloured!

Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and the raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?

The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticise in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and the raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?

This is fine! he said to himself. This is better than whitewashing!

ashamed of yourself? What do you think your father, my old friend, would have said if he had been here to-night, and had known of all your goings on?