Quotes About Reflection

She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation.

You could spend your whole life', she said, 'trying to trace events back to your own mistakes.

I mean, we have to read books or we'll make mistakes. If we read stories of how other people lived, we can figure out better ways to live. I mean we can look at other people's lives and not make the same mistakes they made. Or we can, like, use their examples as models for ourselves.

That's the thing about me. I prefer things once they're already over and I'm working on understanding them. I wish I were faster at that - like, I could understand things while they're happening - but I always have to read the whole book and write the entire paper before I even know what the hell I'm thinking.

I have no wisdom to share on dating.

Everyone has these rooms if they'd only realize it. And the most important thing is to find out what a room's trouble is. Usually, it is simply neglect, physical or social.

his illness had done this much, in wiping out his old scrupulousness; it was, I imagine, one of the many intimately personal castings-off which heaven alone knew how many other men on active service were practising.

Isn't it strange some people make You feel so tired inside, Your thoughts begin to shrivel up Like leaves all brown and dried! But when you're with some other ones, It's stranger still to find Your thoughts as thick as fireflies All shiny in your mind!

But I was so sure of myself. I believed I could manage my own life. Mud might spatter and spoil other skirts, but not mine. Somehow I believed no harm could come to me because I meant no harm to others. I was defiant and proud because I felt too sure of myself.' "'You are not the first to make that mistake,' he answered gravely. 'We all believe our lives are our own till we find we cannot separate them from other lives.'" -p. 300

It's been so happy for us all to have you here, and I've tried not to think of - of the accounting that you and I, too, must give to the Duchesse. I cannot help feeling that you - that we shall pay dearly because you came with us and left her behind." "I always pay." He spoke evenly, but his brows drew together in a frown. "Sometimes I pay most for what I never had. I've been happy these few days, and at least that's something on my side of the ledger.

I always regretted how much I hurt you.

He reached out and grasped her arm. "Please don't walk away from me again. I know I hurt you the night you told me you loved me and I walked away, but Gabrielle, you've walked away from me twice now.

He'd been thinking about a lot of things lately, things that would never happen, things it was best not to think about. Things like waking up with Delaney every morning for the rest of his life and watching her hair turn gray.

There's something about you, Maddie," he said as he looked into her eyes. "Something more than the way you make love. Something that makes me think about you when I'm pouring drinks or watching Travis strike out in T-Ball.

each loss had been devastating in its own ways and had changed her life.

When life sucks the hardest, you survive by finding someplace to sit still and clear your head. Breathe fresh air and lose yourself in life's simple pleasures.

I turn away from my reflection and step into the shower. I turn the water all the way hot, then all the way cold. I wait for my fists to unclench, for my spine to unwind. I wait to calm down. I don't think it's going to happen for me. It's one of those days. My mood has been ordained. I'm a wretch.

How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying?

A feeling rose in me, and I just let it, because what harm could it do? It only had another thirty-two adagio bars of life in this world. Twenty-four. Sixteen. Eight more bars in which I love you. Three. Two. One.

I gave you two choices as a test: there are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply.

Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.

When I think about voting, I can skip it and still see myself as a good citizen. But when I think about being a voter, now the choice reflects on my character. It casts a shadow.

What my voting record reflects is constantly looking to improve the amount of resources we having going into research, development, and prototypes we have going into renewable energy sources.

As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think about making a choice in the voting booth.