Quotes About Reflection

My earnest wish is to paint in true colors the goodness of God to me, and the depth of my own ingratitude

Whatever truth you have chosen, read only a small portion of it, endeavouring to taste and digest it, to extract the essence and substance thereof, and proceed no farther while any savour or relish remains in the passage: when this subsides, pick up your book again and proceed as before, seldom reading more than half a page at a time, for it is not the quantity that is read, but the manner of reading, that yields us profit.

If while reading, you feel yourself recollected, lay aside the book and remain in stillness; at all times read but little, and cease to read when you're thus internally attracted.

Plus je vois le homes, plus j'admire les chiens" (The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs).

In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always.

True leadership requires the capacity to shape public opinion, not merely reflect it.

Historie se žije dopÃ…â"¢edu, ale píÅ¡e dozadu.

The time had come to capture thought once again in a net of words.

Then I remembered that I had yet to learn, if I ever was to learn, how strongly people in love could feel. In any event, I was the last person in the world to judge anyone as foolishly impulsive, for this was my own greatest fault.

When are you going to stop thinking about things that don't matter and start thinking about what lies ahead for you?

EVERYONE WHO CAN should write a memoir, whether for publication or just to deposit in a drawer or beam to the cloud. There is drama in every life. Fame is irrelevant to one's worth and can sometimes be an obstacle to an appropriate appreciation of others. Further, the effort to reflect on our opportunities and choices is, for all of us, a challenge worth attempting.

I once experimented with meditation, cleared my mind, and immediately remembered a phone call I had to make; that was that.

ON THE NIGHT of November 23, Beneš began an eventful pilgrimage

Power is, as we know, an addiction prone to abuse. Even those who enter public life with the best of intentions are susceptible to its pull. We ought, therefore, to be mindful of our own bad habit—which is to look for and expect easy answers when the most serious problems we face are anything but.

Years from now, we may look back on Trump as a onetime oddity who taught us a lesson we will not forget about the quirks of democracy

Instead, we prepare for the next jump, then the one after, until after a lifetime of motion is past, we are startled, at least a little, by where we are and by what we have become.

Those nostalgic for the region's good old days are not remembering; they're daydreaming.

Even those who enter public life with the best of intentions are susceptible to its pull. We ought, therefore, to be mindful of our own bad habit—which is to look for and expect easy answers when the most serious problems we face are anything but.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

I know that throughout my life I have struggled to forgive my father. Now, as I get older, I wish most of all that he had been able to find a way to forgive himself.

What happened if you melted a person down layer by layer? What if there was nothing between the layers, and nothing at the centre, only quiet?

I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?

Solitude can reshape your life. Like a river that gets cut off from the sea. You think it's moving somewhere, but it's not. You can drown inside yourself.