Quotes About Reflection

becoming more of a human doing than a human being

Remember when you see the stars that you are looking back in time millions of years. The past is present now and here.

Instead, we are living inside our own little narrative bubble of the moment, frequently misattributing cause and effect and therefore completely imprisoned in thoughts and emotions that are both inaccurate and misguided.

Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. —NADINE STAIR, EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

but we're not being educated in how to be, only in how to accomplish. So it's all about acquisition, about getting stuff we don't have...As soon as you realize it's a thought pattern, you can write yourself a restraining order.

He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.

But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.

I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.

to explore the inner country of his own soul.

Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.

My ignorance was inexcusable, and it made me ashamed.

I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink (…) That was a very different thing from wanting to die.

Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around

At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard.

But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. Thomas F. Hornbein

how difficult it is for those of us preoccupied with the humdrum concerns of adulthood to recall how forcefully we were once buffeted by the passions and longings of youth . . . 'The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent...' (pg. 185)

Several authors and editors I respect counseled me not to write the book as quickly as I did; they urged me to wait two or three years and put some distance between me and the expedition in order to gain some crucial perspective. Their advice was sound, but in the end I ignored it - mostly because what happened on the mountain was gnawing my guts out. I thought that writing the book might purge Everest from my life. It hasn't, of course.

I looked down. Descent was totally unappetizing.… Too much labor, too many sleepless nights, and too many dreams had been invested to bring us this far. We couldn't come back for another try next weekend. To go down now, even if we could have, would be descending to a future marked by one huge question: what might have been? Thomas F. Hornbein     Everest: The West Ridge A

I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.

In trying to understand McCandless, I inevitably came to reflect on other, larger subjects as well: the grip wilderness has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons. The result of this meandering inquiry is the book now before you.

As a young man, I was unlike McCandless in many important regards; most notably, I possessed neither his intellect nor his lofty ideals. But I believe we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with out fathers. And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul.

Pat was a serious listener. He was one of the first people who really challenged my ideas: 'Do you really believe that? Why? Don't accept everything you read. You should question it all, take what makes sense, and throw away the rest.' He was constantly asking, 'Did you ever consider this? What about that?' He changed the way I thought. (quoting Russell Baer, Army Ranger.)

Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest, and I was grateful to be granted a bit of it on this day, in such a remarkable setting.