reflection quotes

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

God created man, but I could do better.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

Dissents speak to a future age.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.

What’s done can’t be undone.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

As I’m traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we’ve harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don’t know what I feel; I just don’t know what the emotion is.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.