Quotes About Reflection

You are writing a Gospel, A chapter each day, By deeds that you do, By words that you say. Men read what you write, Whether faithless or true; Say, what is the Gospel According to you?

Be patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know.

they were assisted by the new technological invention of the telephone (that enemy of reflection, which became increasingly accepted as as means of communication) . . .

An ideal world is left as an exercise to the reader.

It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.

Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.

Indeed there may be more: a chorus of me, the observed and the observers.

The certainty's is gone, as you say. But that's exactly what you just said distinguishes our age from theirs. We can't go back, or pretend we are back. We have to go on from where we are. In doubt.

The certainty's gone, as you say. But that's exactly what you just said distinguishes our age from theirs. We can't go back, or pretend we are back. We have to go on from where we are. In doubt.

That May, Einstein excitedly informed a friend, "In the tranquility of my sickness, I have laid a wonderful egg in the area of general relativity. Whether the bird that will hatch from it will be vital and long-lived only the gods know. So far I am blessing my sickness that has endowed me with it.

During the Year of the Monkey, the press, which had hitherto generally supported the war or stuck to feel-good stories of heroism and mateship, vigorously changed its tune. The media reacted to growing middle-class disenchantment with the war: they did not initiate or promote anti-war feeling; they reflected and fed off it.

Only by understanding the past may we free ourselves from its tyranny.

Think of some part of nature that you love - a particular forest, say. Do you expect the forest to love you back? Does it worry you that the forest cannot love you back? Does it make you love the forest any the less?

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

Solitude is a wonderful thing in two ways. First, it allows a man to be with himself, and second, it prevents him being with others.

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that's been in front of you all your life.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

The mere adding of years to life is not living.

non numerantur sed ponderantur (They are not counted but weighed)

La soledad es algo maravilloso (...), por dos motivos: primero porque le permite a un hombre estar consigo mismo; y segundo porque se libra de estar con los demás.

I know everything I know about.

A vida é como um lago para onde uma criança ociosa atira uma pedrinha e, a partir desse ato, as ondas espalham-se para o exterior. Errado. A vida é um ribeiro: não uma torrente de água a galgar as margens, apenas um ribeirinho vulgar e insignificante, com os redemoinhos, turbilhões e vórtices normais [...]