Quotes on Reflection

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.

Angels are intelligent reflections of light, that original light which has no beginning. They can illuminate. They do not need tongues or ears, for they can communicate without speech, in thought.

If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection

When we get up in the morning, what we put on is very much a reflection of how we see the world and how we want it to see us.

We are compelled by reflection to recognize that God is not to be placed against the material world [as in Christianity], but must be placed as a 'divine power' or 'moving spirit' within the cosmos itself ... All the wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same original force.

But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.

Reflection is only a partial understanding of truth if it does not translate itself in practice into commitments to the common good and justice. Truth is not mere abstraction but something to be done and is only apprehended when this is realized.

What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurerance of our identities? I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was so egotist...he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the beautiful comrade, the only inseparatable love...poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.

What we see in the outer is but a reflection of the inner, because we surround ourselves with a picture of our own beliefs. In other words, we manifest in general what we seriously think and believe. So if we want to find out what our habitual thinking is like, we have but to look around us and ask ourselves what we really see.

When I was modelling, I spent half my life staring at thousands of perfect reflections. It got to a stage where I was losing all sense of reality - so after I quit modelling, I took all the mirrors out of my house.

I am a mirror to my neighbor, and in that mirror, he must see a reflection of Jesus. If that mirror is cloudy or distorted, Jesus' reflection will be so vague it will hardly be seen.

Your Remedy is within you, but you do not sense it._x000D_ _x000D_ Your Sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it._x000D_ _x000D_ You Presume you are a small entity,_x000D_ _x000D_ But within you is enfolded the entire universe._x000D_ _x000D_ You are indeed the evident book,_x000D_ _x000D_ By whose alphabet the hidden becomes the manifest._x000D_ _x000D_ Therefore, you have no need to look beyond yourself,_x000D_ _x000D_ What you seek is within you, if only you reflect.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.

Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves.

I hope that there's a little black boy somewhere in Montana that never thought that he would see a reflection of himself, and he turns on the television, like, 'Oh my God, thank you.'