reflection quotes

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Philosophy is the highest music.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

There is so much that people take for granted.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I have wondered about time all my life.