Quotes About Reflection

If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator.

The Via Media has slept in libraries; it is a substitute of infancy for manhood.

Catholicism is a deep matter. You cannot take it up in a teacup" [..] "You must consent to think.

The present is a text, and the past its interpretation.

Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be...

And now that I think back, I realize the real gap between us lay in the fact that I, who was so proud of coming from the swift-winged world of science, was laughing at an old world where it was possible seriously to believe that men die young of the bad habit of failing to go out on a dangerous river to gaze at the earth when it turns overnight into silver.

I wish she were alive, but I am grateful for her death. If she were alive, I would likely still be working at the literary agency. For how much longer in my life would I have believed there was time for everything? And by the time I faced my own mortality at the Bookmill in western Massachusetts, how much less would I have done? Her leaving taught me about the worst sadness, one we all must face eventually. I feel lucky I am better equipped to help others who are going through it now.

There is no peace in dying.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don't even notice. It's never any fun, but it can't be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while.

As a father now myself, it's sobering to think about how the smallest comments will ripple through your children's lives, with some leaving permanent warps. I must console myself in the certainty that I am helping them and damaging them in other ways I cannot see.

these moments you wonder what you are teaching their kids, and your own. Then you realize you are teaching them the truth about America.

This is a book about me, at what I hope is the beginning of the second half of my life and not the brief, final tenth.

But even though we were all horrifying reminders of our own mortality, it was nice to see my old, crumbling friends.

All men, I think, wonder who the secret man that lives inside them is and whom they will meet in the mirror when they stop shaving. They wonder if that man is better than the one they know. If that elder sage or fantasy wizard or feral mountain man will be wiser than they, and when they are lost, if that dude will light up his staff and guide them through the dwarven mines and out of the wilderness.

Night coming tenderly Black like me.

He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest.

Those who say 'you only live once' have never read a book.

the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.