Quotes About Reflection

It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement.

No se nos queda grabada eternamente una imagen con que soñamos porque se embellezca y mejore con el reflejo de los colores extraños que por azar la rodeen en nuestros sueños, porque aquellos paisajes de los libros que leía se me representaban con mayor viveza en la imaginación que los que Combray me ponía delante y los análogos que me hubiera podido presentar.

No doubt, having developed the habit, out of idleness, of each day putting off my work until the day after, I thought that death could be dealt with in the same way.

Altogether, I had derived little benefit from being in Balbec, for which reason I was all the more determined to come back one day. I felt I had spent too short a time there.

Ideas are substitutes for sorrows...

La lectura está en el umbral de la vida espiritual; puede introducirnos en ella: no la constituye.

Like a blood-red sky that warns the passerby, "There is a fire over there," certain blazing looks often reveal passions that they serve merely to reflect. They are flames in the mirror.

The truth I am seeking is not in the drink, but in me

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

He turned his head to avoid seeing the happy tableau of pleasures that he had passionately loved and that he would never enjoy again.

He felt the inspirations of his youth, which had been dissipated by a frivolous life, stirring again in him, but they all bore now the reflection, the stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent soul, he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another. He

Rien qu'un moment du passé? Beaucoup plus peut-être; quelque chose qui, commun à la fois et au présent, est beaucoup plus essentiel qu'eux deux.

In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And

For a man cannot change, that is to say become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has ceased to be.

Dire que j'ai gâché des années de ma vie, que j'ai voulu mourir, que j'ai eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui n'était pas mon genre!

The anaesthetic effect of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things. The door-handle of my room, which was different to me from all the other doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to open of its own accord and without my having to turn it, so unconscious had its manipulation become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body for Golo. And

To see how pretty an old woman once was, it is not enough just to look at each feature; they must be translated.

Muitas vezes, é unicamente por falta de espírito criador que não se vai muito longe no sofrimento. E a mais terrível realidade nos concede, ao mesmo tempo que o sofrimento, a alegria de uma bela descoberta, porque só faz doar uma forma clara e nova ao que ruminávamos há muito sem desconfiar.

and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared thus without the church. And, indeed, there are many others which look best when seen in this way,

And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there before his eyes.

loopholes opened by disappointment. Dreams are not to be converted into reality, that we know; we would not form any, perhaps, were it not for desire, and it is useful to us to form them in order to see them fail and to be instructed by their failure.

É muita vez apenas por falta de espírito criador que não se vai bastante longe no sofrimento. E a realidade mais terrível dá, ao mesmo tempo que o sofrimento, a alegria de uma bela descoberta, porque não faz senão dar uma forma nova e clara ao que ruminávamos desde muito sem o saber.

a work of art is the only means of regaining lost time.

Os que vêm a conhecer algum detalhe exato da vida alheia tiram logo consequências que não o são, e veem no fato recém-descoberto a explicação de coisas que precisamente não têm nenhuma relação com ele.