Quotes About Reflection

I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.

That which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing.

Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

If heaven be so fair,the sun so fair, how much fairer shall He be that made them fair? For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures, proportionally the maker of them is seen.

Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people's laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.

It's amazing how much funny stuff there is.... [A] river of rich comedic milk is flowing across the land, and as fast as I skim off the cream more cream appears.... I may be doomed to wade around forever in other people's pith. Not that it's such a bad life.

Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber (1894–1961)

During this design process, we rarely considered whether we were performing analysis, design, or implementation

Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression.

When you are working on a problem, you sometimes get so close to it that you can't see all the options. You miss elegant solutions because the creative part of your mind is suppressed by the intensity of your focus. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to go home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and take a shower.

C'était, pensa-t-elle, comme un doux peigne passant dans son cerveau, redressant les pensées et défaisant les nÅ"uds.

Teaching philosophy isn't what I do. Teaching philosophy is, sort of, what I am.

He became reflective and, somehow, withdrawn [zamknutym]. He gave up games but not books, and would go off in a corner and read assiduously."[127] Thus, young Djugashvili began to show the reticence and brooding aloofness from others that would characterize him in later years.

It's understandable that we would believe many things as children that our parents and others in our society have passed on to us as if they were absolute truths, even though they may be nothing but traditional prejudices. But why do we cling to what Mencken called the "palpably false" after we're old enough to think for ourselves?

Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.

A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

Here she was back in the brightly lit world she had been avoiding for twenty years, and it was exactly as awful as she remembered it.

Words like anchors, tethering boats of memory that would otherwise be scuttled by the storm.

The book was a pleasure to write, and I thought it both original and good, though what was original about it was not necessarily good, and what was good about it was not always original.

the question… as always, the question is how to look at the sun without being blinded.

Vanished children, I can't think where I lost them...

By the time she reached her apartment in Clear Lake