Quotes About Reflection

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare." -Kenko Yoshida

Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone, we are not alone in traveling it.

E)very soul requires secret places for contemplation as well as open spaces for celebration.

Isabeau had a garden insider of her.

We are often reminded that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and I believe deeply in the truth of that sentiment. Few things are as vital as remembering and passing on history to future generations.

May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.

you will greatly increase your chances of success if you stop long enough to get clear on your motivation, understand why you've been doing what you're doing now,

CLEARING OUT CLUTTER: "DOES THIS LOOK LIKE IT BELONGS TO THE PERSON I WANT TO BE?

I looked over at her face. I could see the light from my heartbeat on her tears.

Keep thinking. You can hear our brains rattling around inside us, like the littler Russian dolls.

I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.

I meditated on the passage of time, and how it may be found in both a dry and a wet or gaseous state; how, though lush, it might be dessicated for storage.

We believe that the body hath its rights — to move in a reasonable ambit — to raise, to lower its limbs — but across the face of this earth, there are every day those who suffer unforgivable torments, strapped or chained, confined in boxes or in the holds of ships. May the Lord remind me of this always as I walk free upon paths, and may I thus always give thanks unto Him for the strange, small gifts of gesture, of simple tasks done with requisite care and sphere of action.

Dear reader. Dear, dear reader. Here we find ourselves, you and me, engaged in a book in which someone has just exclaimed, in all seriousness, 'The sentient lobsters!' How did we end up here? Did we make some mistake along the way?

I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence. I do not know what we may do, to know another better.

It was a strange moment, like when you get sad after sex, and it feels like it's too late in the afternoon, even if it's morning, or night, and you turn away from the other person, and they turn away from you, and you lie there, and when you turn back towards them you can both see each other's moles. Usually there seem to shadows from Venetian blinds all across your legs.

Of course I had my heart broken as a teen. I was desperately in love with myself. Then I found out that I was completely shallow. I haven't spoken to myself since.

Katie cleared her throat again. Then she looked into the window at her gums. She said, "To change the subject, do you think I could tell if I had gingivitis?

Someday I'll give it to her. When everything is better. The natural history of her life, sketched out, because nothing means as much until it has vanished.

If we're going to ask our kids at age 18 to go off to war and die for their country, I don't see any problem with asking them at age 16 to think about what that might mean.

It's important to see who you're growing into and who you used to be.

and we smoke their sorrow contentedly; and we eat their sorrow; and we wear their sorrow; and wonder how it came so cheap. It

because nothing means as much until it has vanished.

We are all suspended in a sphere of imagery and voices vying for attention. How do we know that what's going on is actually in our best interest? How can we be sure that our way of life will be preserved for the future? And do we really want it to be?