Best 1516 quotes in «reflection quotes» category

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste, — sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar….

We are like the moon. The moon shines anyway, but it does not produce its own light. It reflects the light illuminated onto its surface by the Sun and is never proud to say "I am the source of light". God shines through us, hence He deserves the glory; not us.

We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.

We are told that in translation there is no such thing as equivalence. Many times the translator reaches a fork in the translating road where they must make a choice in the interpretation of a word. And each time they make one of these choices, they are taken further from the truth. But what we aren’t told is that this isn’t a shortcoming of translation; it’s a shortcoming of language itself. As soon as we try to put reality into words, we limit it. Words are not reality, they are the cause of reality, and thus reality is always more. Writers aren't alchemists who transmute words into the aurous essence of the human experience. No, they are glassmakers. They create a work of art that enables us to see inside to help us understand. And if they are really good, we can see our own reflections staring back at us.

We cannot tell a client what to do, but we can say what to do with what we say.

We grow when we allow changes to change us.

We define learning as the transformative process of taking in information that, when internalized and mixed with what we have experienced, changes what we know and builds on what we can do. It’s based on input, process, and reflection. It is what changes us.

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away.

We don’t really communicate […]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we’ve evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we’ve created. Perhaps it’s a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.

We do what we want; even when it seems crazy.

We humans are prone to err, and to err systematically, outrageously, and with utter confidence. We are also prone to hold our mistaken notions dear, protecting and nourishing them like our own children. We defend them at great cost. We surround ourselves with safe people, people who will appreciate our cherished views. We avoid those who suggest that our exalted ideas, our little emperors, have no clothes.

We may take it that the world is undoubtedly itself [i.e., is indistinct from itself], but, in any attempt to see itself, as an object, it must, equally, undoubtedly act so as to make itself distinct from and therefore false to itself. In this sense, in respect to its own information, the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us.

We lie in wait for the right moment and the just cause, which, at this moment, is simply wanting to live.

Well, enough of this introspection. It’s depressing, quite frankly.

We may not stay quick, If we are weak or sage, but a lot can squeak As we start to age.

We must always strive to reflect the highest vision of ourselves.

We must make time to reflect on life.Someday this life will be gone.

We need people to think. We need people to think better. We need people to think more. Reflection is a valuable tool, but only in the way to drive a way forward.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

We must always reflect only what we wish to see reflected within us.

We see what we are only through reflection and thus the more our reflections occur, the less our mistakes will be!

We should never give up on an idea because it is too old; not because it is stupid, but to not need a plan B.

We took the path that led others nowhere and only we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. They warned us about the monsters we would encounter, the odds that we would meet. And they laughed when we got the scars while fighting the dragons on our way. When we came back out of the tunnel, holding the sword that they always craved for tightly in our hand. Bleeding and the sun shining on our face. We became the tales they wanted to be. We became the reflections of what they always wanted to see themselves through. We became the warriors they had always imagined of.

We were left with nothing because of a love like acid that ate its way through our entire family.

We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short.

We think we've seen it all before, we think we know it all by heart.

We were wiser as children if not for anything else but for our ability to always reflect. Reflection is a powerful tool to move forward into an enlightened stage of wisdom. Children reflect everyday about being reprehended, what made them happy, something new they discovered. This constant state of reflection is what makes them grow and unfortunately the arrogance of adulthood brings reflection to a halt and puts a stop to a continual growth that we should pursue, as we once did.

What is love really, but two imperfect people staring at their reflection and loving what they see...because someone chose to stand beside them.

What is right and what is wrong should be seen seriously, even with close friends; we must judge the cause with diligence of what is right or not.

What is life? Life is living in this moment, experiencing and experimenting but experience isn’t life. Life is reflecting and meditating but reflection isn’t life. Life is helping and guiding but philanthropy isn’t life. Life is eating and drinking but food isn’t life. Life is reading and dancing but art isn’t life. Life is kissing and pleasuring but sex isn’t life. Life is winning and losing but competition isn’t life. Life is loving and caring but love isn’t life. Life is birthing and nurturing but children aren’t life. Life is letting go and surrendering but death isn’t life. Life is all these things but all these things aren’t life. Life is always more.

What if everyone's life was judged solely by the worst thing they'd ever done?

What is sitting behind your judgments? What fears are you coddling?

What is this life that wraps us up in tests? That has us fleeing the demons of yesterday, only to find them further down the path, waiting to trip us up again?

What made me become what I am now is just a reflection of how you have made me.

What makes me who I am? Be around people who are what I want to be.

What the privileged do with what is left, how to make alive what will one day be yours?

What we are, we see the reflection in others.

What wild undisturbed corners do you leave within you or within your partner, your children, your parents, your closest friends? What is left respectfully and quietly for passive cultivation, for privacy, for the imagination, for discovery, for serendipity, for faith, for secrecy, for grace, for reverence, for the untapped, for the future, for the unknowable and the unknown?

What you see, you bless. What you want to be, you bless the people you have.

What you think I think of you is what you think of yourself

When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.

Whenever we make one thing the central cause of a problem or the singular solution to that problem, the stakes are always too high to allow honest conversation or vulnerable reflection.

When everything was burning up right in front of you, you could imagine parts of yourself burning along with it-all your disappointments, all the things you'd done that you wish you hadn't, even all the bad memories.

When negative feelings move upon you, reflect, and recognize the danger of feeding those feelings and keeping them alive.

When I look back and reflect even to this day I made the decision to stop feeling sorry for myself and to move forward even when I felt like I didn't want to

When I lay down on my deathbed, I want to know that I have done all I could to be a first rate human, not a third rate pawn of the gods.

When I was a child, I understood the things of my childhood. Now that I have grown into a man, I understand less of the world than I did as a lad.

When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks.

When there is a beautiful reflection, we know not where to look, to the reflection or to the reflected!

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn’t to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness—that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life.