Quotes About Reflection

Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.

Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

Everything found in this world must have its counterpart in the worlds above. Kabbalists have a phrase to describe this process: As above, so below. Our world is the seeable, touchable, hearable, smellable, and tastable form of all the hidden spiritual worlds. There is nothing in our physical world that does not come from the worlds above. Kabbalah tells us that everything we see in this world is only a reflection, an approximation, a clue, to something beyond outward appearances.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions.

"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life.

Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.

I am not I; pity the tale of me.

Malcolm Muggeridge captured this parting of the ways in a gloomy piece for Encounter: 'Each time I return to England from abroad,' he observed, 'the country seems a little more run-down than when I went away; its streets a little shabbier, its railway carriages and restaurants a little dingier; the editorial pretensions of its newspapers a little emptier, and the vainglorious rhetoric of its politicians a little more fatuous.'29

The greatest danger to both society and the individual, we learn from Socrates, is the suspension of critical thought.

Marcus Aurelius 121–180 'The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts' Adopted

Forget the old advice to think twice. Superforecasters often think thrice—and sometimes they are just warming up to do a deeper-dive analysis.

The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed," McNamara wrote in his autobiography. "We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later."5

if you have the time to think before making a big decision, do so—and be prepared to accept that what seems obviously true now may turn out to be false later.

We have all been too quick to make up our minds and too slow to change them.

there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction….Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being who you are." Everything happens for a reason. Everything has a purpose.

Occasionally we go on vacation to a place where there are no newspapers and no television. And when we return we find the world hasn't ended. We realize that even though following the news may be essential to making a living, it has little to do with living a spiritual life.

Thus, when we look out at the world, we are nature gazing upon itself.

No matter how routine the commute seems, no two trips are ever the same.

music gives me a structure to think about how the world could possibly be.

Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.