Quotes About Reflection

Reading, like prayer, remains one of our few private acts

People who grow up without a sense of how yesterday has affected today are unlikely to have a strong sense of how today affects tomorrow. They are unlikely to understand in a bone-deep way how the decisions they make now will shape and affect their future.

Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was feeling the effects of time. "Here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring will give way," Jefferson grumbled in a note to Adams. He could no longer walk very far, although he tried to ride two or three hours a day.

But fear is a cheap emotion, however full of wisdom. And, emotionally speaking, I've always thought of myself as a man of expensive taste.

Mi culpa es todo lo que me queda. Si la pierdo, no habré significado nada, no habré hecho nada, no habré sido nada.

Sometimes I wonder what if I run off or dropped dead," Francis said. "Helen'd probably go crazy." "Why if you dropped dead she'd bury you before you started stinkin'," Jack said. "That's all'd happen." "What a heart you have," Francis said. "You gotta bury your dead," Jack said.

Garden as though you will live forever.

LOSS COMES IN every moment. Second by second our lives are stolen from us. What is past will never come again.

It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall is a construct both of what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see.

Fishing, Danny boy, is purely a state of mind. Some men, when they are fishing, are after fish. Me, I'm after things you could never set a barbed hook in.

And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time. Better, I think, to wish for her wisdom, a virtue not so fickle.

He knew there was no magic to wipe clean the slate of memory. You just learned how to move on.

But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can't or won't touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams.

Loss comes in every moment. Second by second our lives are stolen from us. What is last will never come again.

And, Jake, there's going to be lots in this world you're going to feel bad about. Save your regret for the important things, okay?" Gus

He'd never slept with Molly before. Before, the bed had been a place of brief coming together and of leaving. It felt god to lie beside her with the early sun beyond the window and the cabin full of qiet. It was peaceful and healing to be with her and not be cut apart by guilt.

Although I'd had no trouble looking at the casket the day before, on that Saturday I did my best to keep my eyes averted. I stared instead at the stained-glass window behind the altar and imagined shooting the panes out with a slingshot.

I was little more than a child still wrapped in a soothing blanket of illusion

I've always thought of her in the way I think of a precious gem: The beauty isn't in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.

The day was hot and windless and the sky a hard china blue and I lay alone on the railroad bridge and cried my heart out above a river that seemed to have none.

I lay in the dark thinking about the bitterness inside the pig scarer and the sadness that was there, too, and I figured they were probably twins joined at the hip.

I need some-" Cork thought a moment. "I was going to say advice, but the truth is, I need some guidance, Tom." "We all do sometimes. It's not always easy to admit.

And, Jake, there's going to be lots in this world you're going to feel bad about. Save your regret for the important things, okay?

Love is the only river I know whose current flows both ways.