Quotes About Reflection

As the eyes of Lyncæus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.

Finish everyday and be done with it. You have done what you could.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you

There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive, — a statement possible, so broad and so pungent that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it.

The years teach much which the days never knew!

When you have worn out shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out.

We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.

We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables

The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles.

It is with religion as with marriage. A youth marries in haste; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should have much to say,' he might reply, 'if the question were open, but I have a wife and children, and all question is closed for me.

No puedo recordar todos los libros que he leído, como no puedo recordar todas las comidas que he tomado, aún así, son quienes me han hecho»

Oh, what have I to do with time?

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

I would not be hurried … to underrate the Book. … As the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge… I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet.

own fire hath sadness in it.

For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.

We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

We should judge society starting with ourselves and our own minds.

This sense of harmony between the outside and inside worlds doesn't fade as scientific knowledge increases. Instead, with each new law that science reveals, the analogies between nature and ourselves grow deeper. Every discovery about the universe brings us a greater understanding of ourselves.

The true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder.