Quotes About Reflection

Alex was not the only person I've heard say that being forced to lie in bed with nothing to do for months was the best thing that ever happened to him. In his case, it was TB. He read all the time he was in the sanatorium, and came out looking back with pity on the ignorant youth he had been.

What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That'a all. That's all it ever will be.

You're suggesting I should write of our experience? How? If I set down every word of the exchange between us during an hour, it would be unintelligible unless I wrote the story of my life to explain it.

After all, this situation, a similar one, is bound to roll around again, in a different context, a different history. Everything does. And the next time, will we (humankind) recognise it and do better?

I see I am falling into the self-punishing, cynical tone again. Yet how comforting this tone is, like a sort of poultice on a wound.

Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability to others.

Ch? có má»™t tá»™i lá»—i th?t sá»± và ??y là tá»± thuy?t ph?c mình r?ng Ä'i?u t?t nhì là Ä'i?u t?t nh?t.

It's painful thinking of the people one has been cruel to.

Obviously, my changing everything into fiction is simply a means of concealing something from myself.

Los viejos saben por experiencia que a veces los recuerdos se alteran y el sentido cambia

That they were both 'insecure' and 'unrooted', words which dated from the era of Mother Sugar, they both freely acknowledged. But Anna had recently been learning to use these words in a different way, not as something to be apologized for, but as flags or banners for an attitude that amounted to a different philosophy.

As soon as one has lived through something, it falls into a pattern. And the pattern of an affair, even one that has lasted five years and has been as close as a marriage, is seen in terms of what ends it. That is why all this is untrue. Because while living through something one doesn't think like that at all.

NÆ°á»›c m?t ch?y trong gi?c ng? là gi?t nÆ°á»›c m?t th?t nh?t ch?y trong cuá»™c ??i c?a chúng ta. Nh?ng gi?t nÆ°á»›c m?t lúc th?c ch? là tá»± thÆ°Æ¡ng h?i mà thôi.

If I have learned so much that I never expected, what more can I hope to learn and understand, providing I am patient, and do not allow myself to ask useless questions?

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.

she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments. or peaks, then nothing had happened to her for a long time; snd she could look forward to nothing much but a dwindling away from full household activity into getting old

Why am I so ungrateful when I suffer so little compared to other women?

Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time, instead of looking at it from outside as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day.

nie do??, ?e jej ukochana babcia zmarÅ'a w bombardowaniu, to jeszcze jej matka z tego wzglÄ™du te? prawdopodobnie siÄ™ nigdy nie urodziÅ'a, wiÄ™c nie do?? ?e jest sierotÄ…, to jeszcze sama nawet te? nie istnieje ani nigdy nie istniaÅ'a i tak jest lepiej dla nich wszystkich, a zwÅ'aszcza dla wszystkich innych wszystkich, a przede wszystkim najlepiej jest dla mnie, bo mam tu Å›wiÄ™ty spokój i dla siebie caÅ'y pokój.

You know there are moments such as these when time stands still...

Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.

My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.