Quotes About Reflection

Earlier in his life he had done many foolish things in order to convince himself that he was not worthless

It was something he had always done - moved apart, so he could be alone and think things or a little.

The first difference Newt noticed about being grown up was that time didn't pass as slow.

Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways.

Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually—making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse.

You told me to stay," July said. "I know I did, son," Augustus said. "I'm sure you wish you had. But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back. Go on with your digging and I'll tidy up.

For a time Dish lost all sense of what life was about. He even lost the sense that he was a cowboy, the strongest sense he had to work with. He was just a fellow with a glass in his hand, whose life had suddenly turned to mud. The day before he had been a top hand, but what did that mean anymore?

It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.

If you're planning on dying today I hope you dig your grave first.

In the last year or two he had not only grown indifferent to company, he had begun to find it irritating.

The best to do with a death was to move on from it.

He ought to let the past keep its glow and not try to mix it with what he had in the present.

Part of him wanted to remember; part of him needed to forget.

Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his thinking. It was probably better not to try and think back down the line of life.

The thought crossed his mind that he ought to have married her and not gone rambling. If he had, he wouldn't be in such a fix. But he felt little fear; just an overpowering fatigue. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it was too bad, but he couldn't find the energy to fight it any longer.

In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.

Her own folly amused her: she had once thought of herself as smart—but look at where she was.

If you wait, all that happens is you get older.

That's one of the only things I look forward to about an evening like this, you know -someone to drink tea with at the end of it. For all I know, the whole point of civilization is to provide one with someone to drink tea with at the end of an evening. Otherwise you have no one with whom to talk over whatever may have happened during the evening. Dinner parties are often more fun to talk about than they are to attend - at least they aren't complete until they've been discussed.

It struck her that endings were never as you would expect them to be.

Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered.

He had not stayed, but when he had gone, he hadn't fought, either. He had done nothing but ride twice over the same stretch of prairie, while death had come to both camps.

Don't be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.

You don't get the pint, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I've walked the earth in my pride all these years. If that's lost, then let the rest be lost with it. There's certain things my vanity won't abide.