Quotes About Reflection

Everyone dreams of dropping out of the world once in a while. Then you get in the car and drive back home.

Not till we have lost the world," wrote Thoreau, "do we begin to find ourselves.

Still, the ten days were enough for me to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully into your inner depths might be both profound and disturbing.

Maybe, I thought, Knight would talk about the marrow. He sat quietly, whether thinking or fuming or both, it was hard to tell. But he eventually arrived at a reply. It felt like some great mystic was about to revel the meaning of life. "Get enough sleep," he said. He set his jaw in a way that conveyed he wouldn't be saying any more. This was what he had learned. I accepted it as truth.

Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick, largely withdrew from public life for thirty years. "All profound things," he wrote, "are preceded and attended by Silence.

People are to be taken in very small doses," wrote Emerson. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." Knight read the Tao Te Ching and felt a deep-rooted connection to the verses. "Good walking," says the Tao, "leaves no tracks.

He sat quietly, whether thinking or fuming or both, it was hard to tell. But he eventually arrived at a reply. It felt like some great mystic was about to reveal the Meaning of Life. "Get enough sleep," he said. He set his jaw in a way that conveyed he wouldn't be saying any more. This was what he'd learned. I accepted it as truth.

What I miss most in the woods," Knight said, "is somewhere in between quiet and solitude. What I miss most is stillness." To reach this pristine state, the forest hard-frozen and the animals hunkered, he had to bring himself to the brink of death.

He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed. Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living.

the true solitary does not seek himself, but loses himself.

He'd drop his clothes and slip into the water. The lake's top few inches, after cooking all day in the sun, would be nearly bath warm. "I'd stretch out in the water, " he said, "and lie flat on my back, and look at the stars.

In public, one always wears a social mask, a presentation to the world. Even when you're alone and look in a mirror, you're acting, which is one reason Knight never kept a mirror in his camp. He let go of all artifice; he became no one and everyone.

Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable. I can't dismiss that idea. Solitude increased my perception. But here's

This loss of self was precisely what Knight experienced in the forest. In public, one always wears a social mask, a presentation to the world. Even when you're alone and look in a mirror, you're acting, which is one reason Knight never kept a mirror in his camp. He let go of all artifice; he became no one and everyone.

Knight felt his chest clench with melancholy. How had his life come to this? He occasionally missed his family. 'I suppose a more subtle answer would be, I missed some of my family to a certain degree,' he allowed.

These hermits often wonder how the rest of the world can be so blind, not to notice what we're doing to ourselves. "I have become solitary," wrote the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "because to me the most desolate solitude seems preferable to the society of wicked men

The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex.

I like being alone. My preferred exercise is solo long-distance running, and my job, as a journalist and writer, is often asocial. When life becomes overwhelming, my first thought—my fantasy—is to head for the woods.

Our whole lives, Jefferies said, are wasted traveling in endless small circles; we are all "chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground." The richest person, Jefferies believed, is the one who works least. "Idleness," he wrote, "is a great good." For Jefferies, like

I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives, and I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts

Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is

But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts.

Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is.

Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching (I recommend the Red Pine translation), and started swimming from there. Excellent