Quotes About Reflection

He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie.

Oft am I by the Women told, Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old, Look how thy hairs are falling all; Poor Anacreon how they fall. Whether I grow old or no, By th' Effects I do not know. This I know without being told, 'Tis time to Live, if I grow Old. 'Tis time short Pleasures now to take; Of little Life the best to make, And manage wisely the last Stake.

And, on the ocean's crystal mirror,

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait." ( About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling , New York Times, February 22, 1987)

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

It is a human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.

We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.

All changes, even the most longed for, must have their melancholy

I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday. I always go instead into the eighteenth century.

Das Leben ist zu kurz und Proust zu lang...

his life was gently gliding along like a stream that reflects the heaven and fertilizes the fields.

Gelehrte sind Menschen, die sich von normalen Sterblichen durch die anerworbene Fähigkeit unterscheiden, sich an weitschweifigen und komplizierten Irrtümern zu ergötzen.

Eu não espero que os adversários da verdade confessem que se enganaram. Uma atitude como essa só é possível às almas mais elevadas.

The beautiful things I have seen are still so vivid in my mind that I feel the task of writing them would be a useless fatigue. Why spoil my pleasure-trip by collecting notes? Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

The trouble of living a long time is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him pass away- mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last, we find that we have not loved, we have only been embracing shadows.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves, we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts; but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life. That giddy little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer tact than thou didst ever show for anybody's sake. Right royally hath she repaid thee for the log-fire of her churching-day!