Quotes About Reflection

Viciously, then, I lock my door. The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside Ushers in evening rain. Once more Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

The Trees The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

And you are pieced together bit by bit Set against the evening Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold. — Philip Larkin, from "(A Study in Light and Dark)," The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin , ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012)

Alone now, in my dark room, The pebbles cease to drop into the rocking pool And gradually the surface quietens Reflecting image of darkest peace and silence. No questions catch the clothes But only as it were a spreading Draws all threads to their finished pattern And you are pieced together bit by bit Set against the evening Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold from "(A Study in Light and Dark)

Days What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

At this unique distance from isolation it becomes still more difficult to find words at once true and kind, or not untrue and not unkind.

Truly, though our element is time, We are not suited to the long perspectives Open at each instant of our lives. They link us to our losses: worse, They show us what we have as it once was, Blindly undiminished, just as though By acting differently we could have kept it so. — Philip Larkin, from "Reference Back," The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin , ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012)

XVIII Si le chagrin pouvait Tel un charbon enfoui se consumer, Le cÅ"ur se reposerait calme, L'âme indéchirée serait Tranquille comme une voile ; Mais la nuit entière j'ai regardé Grandir du feu le silence, La cendre grise en douceur s'accroître : Et je remue le réfractaire silex Que délaissent les flammes dans l'âtre, Et le chagrin se remue, et le dextre CÅ"ur gît dans l'impuissance. (p. 31)

Behind the glass, underneath the cellophane, remains your final summer – sweet And meaningless, and not to come again.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

I say, Father, the years have brought me here, still your son, they have brought me to a life I cannot understand.

As you know, Joyce was a writer who asked his reader to give him a lifetime," he said. "I am that reader, and I can tell you it was a wasted life.

Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary into what it is… a moment in time; an observed fragment of eternity.

The writing of contemporary history can be among the most treacherous of ambitions. Everybody knows we never appreciate what we have till it's gone; that the owl of Minerva flies at dusk; that familiarity breeds contempt; and so forth.

The path not taken, was not taken. No point wondering.

What actually happened in the past is gone- history is our attempt to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains.

They say that even the brightest star won't shine forever. But in fact, the brightest star would live the shortest amount of time. Feel free to extract whatever life lesson you want from that.

We don't need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

He was going to miss everything. But he guessed that was how everybody always felt. Everyone was losing things, leaving things behind, clinging to old memories as they rushed into the future. Everyone was a passenger on a runaway train.

Her face was very beautiful, he thought. He hadn't been sure before, but he was now. The mind that lived behind it made it beautiful, the same way that the flame inside a lantern makes the lantern beautiful.

Hon är själv fånge i sitt eget fängelse.

I always wondered how it would feel when it was over,' said Malik eventually. 'Turns out it doesn't feel like anything, much.

How should I remember the child's name? It was fifteen, sixteen years ago and I have never liked babies; nasty creatures, leak at both ends and have no respect for ceramics.