Quotes About Reflection

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.

Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.

There is no better place or time to be philosophical than when you are airborne. Suspended between heaven and earth, introspection becomes inevitable. The plane may be traveling at supersonic speed but the mind travels faster than light—seemingly without a sense of direction, but almost always with a definite purpose.

I stood knocking at the doorsteps of heaven as I died… "Who are you…?" I was asked. "My entire existence on earth could not tell me who I was… And that is what I have come to ask you…

Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer.

My tidyness and untidyness are full of complicated feelings of regret and sadness.

Ma non si amano soltanto le memorie felici. A un certo punto della vita, ci si accorge che si amano le memorie.

Human relationships have to be rediscovered every day. We have to remember constantly that every kind of meeting with our neighbor is a human action and so it is always evil or good, true or deceitful, a kindness or a sin.

E quando si vedono le cose future con tanta chiarezza, come già stessero succedendo, allora è segno che non devono succedere mai. Perchè son già successe, in un certo senso, nella nostra testa, e non è più consentito di provarle davvero.

But after a certain point in life a person has to dunk her regrets in the morning coffee, just like biscuits.

They weren't happy memories because your father and I were never happy together. Even if we had been briefly and occasionally happy, everything got sullied, ripped up, and destroyed. But people don't love each other only for happy memories. At a certain point in life, you realize that you just love the memories.

La felicità, – lui disse, – sembra sempre niente, è come l'acqua, e si capisce solo quando è perduta. – È vero, – lei disse. E pensò un poco, e disse: – E anche il male che noi facciamo, è così, sembra niente, sembra una sciocchezza, acqua fresca, mentre lo facciamo. Se no allora la gente non lo farebbe, starebbe più attenta.

La quotidiana solitudine è l'unico mezzo che noi abbiamo di partecipare alla vita del prossimo, perduto e stretto in una solitudine uguale.

We are of the universe, and by studying the universe we ultimately turn the mirror on ourselves.

We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album? "Most of the time, when people walk outside at night and see the stars, it's a big, pretty background, and it's not quite real," said the Caltech planetary scientist Michael Brown. "It doesn't occur to them that the pattern they see in the sky repeats itself once a year, or to appreciate why that's true.

We lived so long and so self-consciously that we assumed we must live forever, and we buried our dead with enough talismans and spare change for eternity.

We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

Novels are longer than life.

For us the sordid bargaining of our narrowed city lives, the fret and whirl of petty currents that bear us so far from our inner goal-- all were forgotten in that enchanted land.

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.

Anything you fully do is an alone journey.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.