Quotes About Reflection

Be a mirror, not a sponge.

If she's not held accountable for what she does, she won't have to look at how her behavior affects herself and those around her. And until she is held accountable by others and by herself and decides to change, she won't get better. In fact, she could get worse.

take your life back Don't delay your own happiness. Grab it right now. There are many things you can do today to take your life back. Take some time off to reflect.

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.

Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, or having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life - the homebound writer's irritants. But also being kept waiting is the human conditon.

All travel is circular. I had been jerked through Asia, making a parabola on one of the planet's hemispheres. After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

I added that it was no fun to grow old, but that the compensation for it was that time turned your mental shit-detector into a highly calibrated instrument.

St. Patrick of Ireland Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ below me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ in lying down, Christ in sitting, Christ in rising up, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. — St. Patrick of Ireland

Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.

Man creates what he is.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.