Quotes About Reflection

Can one waste a life?

When the American novelist Howard Sturgis lay on his deathbed he was cared for so solicitously by his life partner that at one point Sturgis had to remind him, "A watched pot never boils"—surely one of the wittiest comments ever made while dying, unless you consider what the socialite Drue Heinz said when nearing the end—"They won't even let you take a book"—or the emperor Vespasian, who remarked on his deathbed, "I think I am turning into a god.

He wandered the streets and parks with the deep pleasure of someone who is saying good-bye to a place, which, once it has been relegated to the past, now seems especially touching.

Thinking is an art because it requires you to listen to your thoughts and then do something with them.

Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.

Andrew J. Bacevich

The moment you step into a garden and begin to cultivate and prune, you become a killer.

I know that we have grown apart and that's as it should be. We learn what we can from certain people, then we move on after we've taken what we need. When we learn nothing new about ourselves in a relationship that's when the relationship is over. Or it's over the moment when we're afraid to learn something new about ourselves. But what I have been learning about myself ... whatever it was inside me that was sparked and challenged when I first met you ... is deeply connected to this story.

But what am I here for?" I now felt bolder. "You're here to find out who you are. And to create your own story.

When we learn nothing new about ourselves in a relationship that's when the relationship is over. Or it's over the moment when we're afraid to learn something new about ourselves.

Well, the announcement to say that I was no longer a member of Vampire Weekend was something that was in the works for a long time. I knew that it was the right choice for me.

Whatever that big procrastination overthinking thing is, I want you to dive into it. When I say dive into, I mean, clear your whole weekend and spend your whole weekend thinking about this.

I'm surrounded by people all day long so I like to stay by myself at the weekend. I need to be alone to learn my lines - and to lie down in the sun and just enjoy!

I always thought I'd be playing; now I watch Manchester United every weekend on Sky Sports and they're using 'Found What I've Been Looking For' as a theme song - and I'm sitting at a pub and it comes on and I'm like, 'Oh yeah, mad.'

Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season - and so memories stir and startle.

My weekends are extremely precious.

My weekends are oases of time and space, where I am able to draw a breath and dive into the stuff I couldn't get to that week - the great article I bookmarked, the friend whose emails I kept dropping, the blog post I'd meant to write on a subject that wasn't timely but was still important.

I arrange it by working four days away from home, and three days at home with the family, so I work four long days rather than five shorter. But it's hard because everything is on hold. We have to restore the family life during the weekends.

The thought of the weekends I used to have now makes me shake.

I used to enjoy the weekends more with my mates rather than putting in the hard graft to be a top player. If I could turn back time, Id probably appreciate my talent more but everything happens for a reason. Everyone learns from their mistakes and I have.

I try to take a weekly digital Sabbath, batch my emails so I deal with them a few times a day rather than constantly, and increasingly give myself permission to ignore unsolicited communiques. I try, too, to give others more slack. The respond-now culture is a two-way street. I'm trying to be more mindful of that.

It's a place where I could do something on a weekly basis and see if I like it.

Getting out any weekly magazine requires many hours of reading, choosing, discarding, and thinking beyond the obvious.

Whether I stay on the air on a weekly basis or I don't, that's not my call. But I've had such a blessed career that if it ended tomorrow, I've got nothing to complain about.