Quotes About Reflection

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.

Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.

It is not fit that every man should travel it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me.

He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busy world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill.

What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it…. It is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things;… to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.

Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands still.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was time when we were not this gives us no concern -- why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be

The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

Reading is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life; the one you will think of longest, and repent of least.

We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.

have I not the reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner -- and then to thinking!

Half the business of modern education is taken up in learning not to be ignorant; a process peculiarly unfavorable both to strength of mind and pregnancy of imagination...

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less lone than when alone...I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country...I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude...

No really great man ever thought himself so.