Quotes About Reflection

Ars moriendi ars vivendi est: the art of dying is the art of living. I had read that somewhere in my postgraduate days and remembered it as I sat at his side. Jason died as he had lived, in the heroic pursuit of understanding. His gift to the world would be the fruits of that understanding, not hoarded but freely distributed.

Brian took her hand a final time, then turned and walked away. Lise sat at the table a while longer. The cooling air from the patio was pleasant. The stars were coming out. Mahmud poured coffee from a silver carafe. What we cannot remember, we must rediscover. "I'm sorry—did you say something?" "I said, it's getting dark." Mahmud smiled. "It's these sunsets. Seems like they go on forever.

There is something mournful and uneasy about waking up late at night on a moving train. The wheels clicked a bony rhythm, the engine growled like a distant Leviathan, and from time to time the whistle sounded a cry so lonesome it seemed to speak for the whole wide moonless night.

N]ot my name, my secret idea of myself.

There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. Its hard to live in all those kinds of times. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.

a state of balance—a clear understanding of why we feel the way we do, conscious of our impulses so that we can think without being secretly compelled by our emotions.

what if we could look within and see the source of our more troubling emotions and why they drive our behavior, often against our own wishes?

Pindar wrote, "Become who you are by learning who you are.

The gods of power frown on the frivolous; they give ultimate satisfaction only to those who study and reflect, and punish those who skim the surfaces looking for a good time.

The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.

We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality.

Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection. With their constant presence, we have less and less mental space to step back and think.

man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. —Carl Jung

The real purpose of the backward-glancing eye is to educate yourself constantly—you look at the past to learn from those who came before you.

The recurrence of this mirrors the recurrence in our own lives of the same problems and mistakes, forming negative patterns. It is hard to learn from experience

Think Like a Writer

She used the closeness of death to teach her what really matters and to help her steer clear of the petty squabbles and concerns that plagued others. She used it to anchor herself in the present, to make her appreciate every moment and every encounter.

The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

Return to the harder or softer sides of your character that you have lost or repressed.

Know How Little You Know

We must stop postponing our awareness. We need to stop feeling superior and special, seeing that death is a fate shared by us all and something that should bind us in a deeply empathetic way. We are all a part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of death.

People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: A people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. —James Baldwin

Things that happened hundreds of years ago are very much a part of your thinking right now...The past lives in us.