Quotes About Reflection

And in their rush to create wonders, they have ignored the wonders all around them, ignored the mysteries, the beauty.

It is not easy to watch the world change around you. To see an entire way of life change and change and change again. It isn't easy to watch friends grown old and die, nor is it easy to be constantly moving on from place to place before people begin to wonder why you never age.

I have a few regrets. There was a girl I should have married, a war in which I should never have fought, a loaf of bread I should have shared, a lie to which I should never have listened. And there is a story I should have told.

That is the curse of immortality: to watch the world change, to see everything you know wither.

Josh started to laugh at his sister and then immediately reconsidered. "I guess I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Vijftieneneenhalf,' zei Dora hoofdschuddend. 'Zo ver kan ik niet terugdenken... Kun jij je nog iets herinneren van toen je vijftien was?' 'Levendig,' zei Scatty bars. 'Was dat niet zo ongeveer toen ik u in Babylon heb opgezocht en u hebt geprobeerd me aan koning Neboekadzenar uit te huwelijken?' 'Volgens mij vergis je je,' zei Dora opgewekt. 'Ik geloof dat dat later was.

I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them....But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

we are nothing more than the sum of our memories and experiences

Longstreet stayed up talking, as long as there was company, as long as there was a fire. Because when the fire was gone and the dark had truly come there was no way he could avoid the dead faces of his children.

When you see a struggle that you may be having personally put on a big screen and in a roomful of people, then it makes you feel less crazy or alone, because you're seeing that other people are dealing with it too. You get to see in this imaginary scenario how people might try and answer some questions or deal with some problems.

As above in consciousness, so below in matter

Reading opens the soul to new journeys.

I think being a parent is the most challenging thing you do. That's why we're here. It's at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It's the ultimate experience because it questions everything about who you are. But it's difficult.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great … He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.

my hope is that whatever it is you decide to believe about whatever subject, you have thought through carefully each of those beliefs and at least tried to make sure that they are your beliefs and not those of your parents. It matters less to me what your specific beliefs are than that you have carefully arrived at your beliefs through reason and evidence and thoughtful reflection.

Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.

do we not all aspire after that which conducts us to the grave—

After supper he went on to the poop once more, and I with him.

Oliphant plays with images of windows and mirrors, translucence and opacity, the present and the past.

If it takes night to make day, pain to know pleasure, black to make white, then doesn't it stand to reason that the depth of our friendships could be measured by the quality of our enemies?

She likes to use the word "realistically" which I come to realize is a rationale, an excuse, to not plan ahead because much of what she might want for herself, upon reflection does not seem realistic.

Imagining human culture from the perspective of a non-human species can be salutary.

The only shot he ever fired in anger… was at himself.

everything was obvious in retrospect. They even had a name for it: "hindsight bias." It referred to the difficulty of remembering how little you knew at the time, how uncertain things were, before they all played out. Even wildly contingent events looked inevitable in retrospect. But they weren't. And it's actually psychologically difficult to imagine not knowing back then what you know now.