Quotes About Reflection

People like theater that is safe, generally speaking — things that are easy, that are not too deeply troubling. In other words, people want to go to the theater and waste their time.

Yes … but was I happy? Did I sit there and did contentment bathe me in its warm light?

Her eyes opened. They were like petals submerged in tiny bowls of unchanged water.

History repeats itself only in that, from afar, we all seem to lead exactly the same life. We are all born; we all spend time here on earth; we all die. But up close, we have each walked down our own separate paths. We have stood at our own lonely crossroads. We have touched the lives of others at crucial points, for better or for worse. In the end, each of us has lived a unique life story, astounding and complicated, a story that could never be repeated.

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

Edward Gibbon

Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past, and to depreciate the present

Conversation enriches the understanding, but the school of genius is solitude.

I was never less alone than when by myself. Edward Gibbon

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [in 96] to the accession of Commodus [in 180].

If in the neighborhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow a race of cannibals really existed, we may contemplate in the period of the Scottish history the opposite extremes of savage and civilised life. Such reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce in some future age the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere.

Let us read with method, and to propose to ourselves an to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

Having got into bed and turned out the light, I quietly burst into tears because I am not a good person. As they came and went for some minutes, I was concerned with the words following 'because' in the previous sentence, rewriting them over and over in my head until they seemed to be as close to the truth as it was possible for me to make them.

where was I? in remarking that me is the envelopes and not nearly so much so, the often foolish letters inside.

I tend to think life is pastiche: I'm not sure what it's a pastiche of - we haven't found out yet.

I tell myself not to remember the past, not to hope or fear for the future, and not to think in the present, a comprehensive program that will undoubtedly have very little success.

If I'm working very hard, which is very seldom, the last thing I want to do in order to relax is to be with people and babbling away and so forth. So I go to the movies or read a book or watch any of my thousands of tapes upstairs.

I always feel that other people's lives are filled with meaning. You look at them on the street and think how real their lives must be. Of course, you also know that isn't true.

I think if you have to think about anything very long, you've obviously done yourself an injury, as it were.

Among the best elements of Star Trek since the original series have been characters that Gene Roddenberry believed held a mirror up to humanity.

Like the best science fiction, Star Trek does not show us other worlds so meaningfully as it shows us our own—

If we can widen the range of experiences beyond what we as individuals have encountered, if we can draw upon the experiences of others who've had to confront comparable situations in the past, then - although there are no guarantees - our chances of acting wisely should increase proportionately.

Aprender acerca del presente a la luz del pasado quiere también decir aprender del pasado a la luz del presente. La función de la historia es la de estimular una mas profunda comprensión tanto del pasado como del presente por su comparación recíproca.