Quotes About Reflection

the history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it's the most deliquescent. We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history—even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?

Try as I could—which wasn't very hard—I rarely ended up fantasising a markedly different life from the one that has been mine. I don't think this is complacency; it's more likely a lack of imagination, or ambition, or something.

Con quale frequenza raccontiamo la storia della nostra vita? Aggiustandola, migliorandola, applicandovi tagli strategici? E più avanti si va negli anni, Meno corriamo il rischio che qualcuno intorno a noi ci possa contestare quella versione dei fatti, ricordandoci che la nostra vita non è la nostra vita, ma solo la storia che ne abbiamo raccontato. Agli altri, ma soprattutto noi stessi. da Il senso di una fine

The answers hardly seemed of consequence. Not much did. I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

There had been addition—and subtraction—in my life, but how much multiplication?

All'improvviso mi sembra che una delle differenze tra la gioventù è la vecchiaia potrebbe essere questa: da giovani, ci inventiamo un futuro diverso per noi stessi; da vecchi, un passato diverso per gli altri. da Il senso di una fine

Then I thought about Adrian. My old friend who had killed himself. And this had been the last communication he had ever received from me. A libel on his character and an attempt to destroy the first and last love affair of his life. And when I had written that time would tell, I had underestimated, or rather miscalculated: time was telling not against them, it was telling against me.

La principal característica del remordimiento es que no tiene remedio: que ha pasado el tiempo de las disculpas o enmiendas

La vida no es sólo una suma y una resta. Es también la acumulación, la multiplicación de pérdidas, de fracasos.

You remembered your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence. You didn't have to see your life as any kind of triumph – his own had hardly been that – but you did need to tell yourself that it had been interesting, enjoyable, purposeful.

the littleness of life that art exaggerates"?

Ragana, pagalvojau. Jeigu pasaulyje yra moteris, kuri? gali ?simyl?ti ir vis tiek manyti, kad gyvenimo verta atsisakyti, tai toji moteris yra Veronika.

Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can't change.

The one thing that is very good in life today is death.

Adrian, however, pushed us to believe in the application of thought to life, in the notion

He found himself reflecting on questions of honesty. Personal honesty, artistic honesty. How they were connected, if indeed they were. And how much of this virtue anyone had, and how long that store would last. He had told friends that if ever he repudiated Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, they were to conclude that he had run out of honesty

It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.

So (and this would have happened earlier, but I am only remembering it now): I am visiting her one afternoon.

Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. Perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description.

Do not imagine that art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? This

Logiškai m?st?, o paskui elg?si logiška išvada. Ta?iau daugelis iš m?s?, ?tariu, daro priešingai: priima instinktyv? sprendim?, paskui kuria priežas?i? infrastrukt?r? jam pateisinti. O rezultat? pavadina sveiku protu.

Julian Barnes