Quotes About Reflection

I love Christmas. A time to slow down and enjoy life and be with my family and friends. In busy years, it keeps me sane. In bad years, it makes me feel whole again.

If only I could start again, I would do everything differently. I would try to win your love through kindness rather than compel it by force, and if I failed, I would accept your will and wish you joy on your own path.

As the next car in the line pulled up, he sent a last yearning glance after Kate, wanting to imprint that laughing image on his mind forever. Girls like her were not for guys like him, who parked cars and worked construction to earn college money. His imagination hadn't been good enough to guess the way the night would end. But that was then, and this

If death is inevitable, one should try to die well.

The most we can ever do is our best," she said quietly. "If worry is interest paid on troubles we haven't had yet, guilt is pain wasted on what can't be changed." "Please remind me of that regularly. I need to hear it.

It is usually better if you don't try to predetermine your response, but rather ask each card, "Do you represent an ability of mine?

There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there.

Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.

Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out.

I've said it's hard. Here's how hard: everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory's waters drowns a little.

Don't look over your shoulder. The past is past. Just try to get through it, and give yourself some grace.

Old wounds. They faded, but they never really went away, did they?

Motherhood, Letty reflected, was the most exhausting thing she'd ever done. She adored her niece, but bearing sole responsibility for another human's well-being was overwhelming. Not to mention terrifying.

There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.

It takes twenty or so years before a mother can know with any certainty how effective her theories have been--and even then there are surprises. The daily newspapers raise the most frightening questions of all for a mother of sons: Could my once sweet babes ever become violent men? Are my sons really who I think they are?

When you're so undecided, it's better not to do anything, the right course of action is to take no action at all

As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she bears of sympathy between them--an impression of which almost every reader would be sensible, even if it had not the explicit confirmation of Jane Austen's letters. Yet, as she is presented to us in Pride and Prejudice, she is but a partial and sometimes perverse observer.

In Jane Austen it was the critical faculty that would not be quieted; and that faculty in her, played on men and women.

Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?

I would like to be able to say that I threw myself into the spirit of it all, but the truth is, I still felt a bit dazed. A bit abstracted. It's going to take time, I guess. If you've thought in a certain way for many years, if you've had a picture in your mind of how things are and that picture is suddenly shown to be faulty, well, it stands to reason that it will take a while to adjust. And during that time, you're bound to feel … disconnected

They all lived in their own little clouds.

The other ponds, our pond included, are just as they have always been.

Memory is a funny thing sometimes.

Mom wrote to God like a pen pal would, so straightforward and friendly. Her mind ricocheted from one thought to another, as mine still does.