Quotes About Reflection

If you're in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

Tradition:' one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.

There was silence, all the louder for having been broken once.

Four Lessons on Life 1. Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up. 2. If you get too far ahead of the army, your soldiers may mistake you for the enemy. 3. Don't complain about the bottom rungs of the ladder they helped to get you higher. 4. If you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm.

The author Karen Blixen once said, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?

At the end of the day, it isn't where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I'm going and never have been before.

An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed.

There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.

Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.

There is nothing like the silence and loneliness of night to bring dark shadows over the brightest mind.

It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.

But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes--a gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious.

If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. —Washington Irving, "The Mutability of Literature

Washington Irving

As the leaves of trees are said to absorb all noxious qualities of the air, and to breathe forth a purer atmosphere, so it seems to me as if they drew from us all sordid and angry passions, and breathed forth peace and philanthropy.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

All now was hurry and bustle. The meeting of acquaintances-- the greetings of friends-- the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers-- but felt that I was stranger in the land.

Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.

The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.