Quotes & Sayings About Looking In The Mirror

Sophie got herself to the mirror, and found that she had to hobble. The face in the mirror was quite calm, because it was what she expected to see. It was the face of a gaunt old woman, withered and brownish, surrounded by wispy white hair. Her own eyes, yellow and watery, stared out at her, looking rather tragic.
"Don't worry, old thing," Sophie said to the face. "You look quite healthy. Besides, this is much more like you really are. — Diana Wynne Jones

It remains to be asked why today it is the image of the woman of the "Golden Age" [the Abbasid dynasty] - a "slave" who intrigues in the corridors of power when she loses hope of seducing - who symbolizes the Muslim eternal female, while the memory of Umm Salama, A'isha, and Sukayna awakens no response and seems strangely distant and unreal.
The answer without doubt is to be found in the time-mirror wherein the Muslim looks at himself to foresee his future. The image of "his" woman will change when he feels the pressing need to root his future in a liberating memory. Perhaps the woman should help him do this through daily pressure for equality, thereby bringing him into a fabulous present. And the present is always fabulous, because there everything is possible - even the end of always looking to the past and the beginning of confidence, of enjoying in harmony the moment that we have. — Fatema Mernissi

Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination. — Jim Carroll

One of the jobs of art is to inspire discussion, and Brokeback Mountain certainly has done that. It's like a window and a mirror. You're looking through a window at lives you may or may not have experienced. But it's a mirror in the sense we've all felt lonely. we're all, at one time or another, looking for and hoping for love. — Diana Ossana

Sometimes you don't have the time to prepare yourself for looking good in front of the mirror with what you're wearing. And then when you go to work or go out, you don't like it. I spend a lot of time preparing. — Renzo Rosso

Daybreak has extraordinary hypnotizing influence,
On us, idealistic observers.
When red sun slowly reveals on the rivers surface,
like in a mirror,
It reminds of two lovers embracing,
Just by looking into each others eyes.
In such deep and serious commitment,
Without unnecessary words,
That spoil the instant of confidence.
Water is not stopping it's course,
Neither does the sun.
That's what makes it so exceptional,
So magnificent.
The only tie is their gentle admiration,
As their love is greater than space separating.

And who ever had the chance, to witness that, just once,
Shouldn't say he haven't found God. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

When you look through the window of hate, you are really looking in the Devil's mirror. — Jack Byrne

managing a company by looking at financial data (lag measures) is the equivalent of "driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror. — Chris McChesney

You find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived. — James Hillman

Telling a woman that you will be unable to climax unless you are looking at her in a mirror is, in my experience, an excellent way to ensure the only place you will ever see her again is in depressing memories. — Stephen Moles

As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't. — Jane L Rosen

From my own personal experience I have consistently witness self-proclaimed Christians, get angry over insignificant issues, be unforgiving, and judgmental all while never looking in the mirror and proclaiming to the world their love for the lord. If I were not already a Christian I would have questioned the faith due to the representatives. — Carl Henegan

When the pope sits on the chamber pot to shit, does he believe in his own infallibility? Does not every imposter occasionally recognize his own hairy, homely humanity? Perhaps not; worn long enough, sometimes the Mask of Authority becomes the man. Even looking in a mirror, he will see the sacred Mask and not his own ordinary human face. — Robert Anton Wilson

When I look in the mirror, I know I'm looking at someone who isn't sure she deserves to be loved at all. — Nicholas Sparks

It's the fact that your body and your personality are not God. God is you. But you can't say you are God just as the ocean is all the waves, but you can't say one wave is the ocean. And so you manifest God in a way that you don't understand. Man himself is the image of God, but he doesn't see that image in himself. And you need to meditate, and there will come your answer, not looking in the mirror. — Goswami Kriyananda

The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein ... provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain. — Donald Woods Winnicott

You do not move ahead by constantly looking in a rear view mirror. The past is a rudder to guide you, not an anchor to drag you. We must learn from the past but not live in the past. — Warren W. Wiersbe

Words are a mirror of their times. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding fastest in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at that time and the points at which the boundaries of human endeavour are being advanced. — John Ayto

I walked into the bathroom and stared at myself for a long time in the mirror, unable to see who was looking back at me-the girl broken and lost to a man she fell in love with or a woman who learned to survive with a broken heart. Maybe I was a little of both. — Nashoda Rose

I am really tired of looking at my hips. I'm seriously really tired of standing naked in the mirror and staring at my hips for hours and hours while muttering, "You hips. You hips need to get it together." — Louis C.K.

I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far. — J.K. Rowling

Instead of looking in the mirror and focusing on your flaws, look in the mirror and appreciate your best features ... everyone has them. — Demi Lovato

Growing up, I didn't get the talk of 'Make sure boys take you on a date and treat you right.' So I was the girl who wasn't dating and would just text. I dated these guys who didn't have jobs, and I would always be paying. At one point, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, 'You're too pretty and cool to be treated like this.' — Meghan Trainor

Seems like the only one who doesn't see your beauty is the face in the mirror looking back at you. — Taylor Swift

They congratulated themselves and went back out to their sodas and Chex mix, leaving me in front of the mirror, a toddler's fussed-over Barbie abandoned in the sandbox. I blinked back my tears and forced myself to look in the mirror. Looking — Janet Fitch

I mean, I tried to change, I did, everybody tries to change, Michael. Not just the queerboys. You look in the mirror and all you see is what's wrong, I'm not _this_ enough or I'm not _that_ enough, and you spend your whole life trying to fix yourself, because you just want to be okay inside your head, you know?

I know you know this, Michael, that's why you're here. You're looking for the fix. Yeah, that's why they call it a fix. Because you think you're broken. Only you're not--that broken feeling? That's normal. That's how you know you're normal. If you're not feeling it, you really are broken, that's the joke — David Gerrold

Failure is easy to measure. Failure is an event.Harder to measure is insignificance. A nonevent. Insignificance creeps, it dawns, it gives you hope, then delusion, then one day, when you're not looking, it's there, at your front door, on your desk, in the mirror, or not, not any of that, it's the lack of all that. One day, when you are looking, it's not looking, no one is. You lie in your bed and realize that if you don't get out of bed and into the world today, it is very likely no one will even notice. — Charles Yu

In the castle of Benwick, the French boy was looking at his face in the polished surface of a kettle-hat. It flashed in the sunlight with the stubborn gleam of metal. It was practically the same as the steel helmet which soldiers still wear, and it did not make a good mirror, but it was the best he could get. He turned the hat in various directions, hoping to get an average idea of his face from the different distoritons which the bulges made. He was trying to find out what he was, and he was afraid of what he would find.
The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life
even when he was a great man with the world at his feet
he was to feel this gap: something at the bototm of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand. There is no need for us to try to understand it. We do not have to dabble in a place which he preferred to keep secret. — T.H. White

If you are searching for someone to hate, try looking in the mirror. — Russ Lippitt

When he saw the vista of the street reflected in the mirror in which he was looking, he was terror stricken. He had the impression that the whole view had turned into eyes that reproached him. — Kobo Abe

In photos, I don't know who the real me is - it's all pretend, just pretend. There's not much of myself in my work. If I'm looking in the mirror and I'm working, I'm looking at my make-up and my hair. It's not the same as looking at myself. — Linda Evangelista

And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.
"Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again.
His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees. "Anyway, I want a cat," she said. "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat." George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square. — Ernest Hemingway,

Looking in the full-length mirror, she thought, I've got everything I had twenty years ago - it's all just three inches lower. — Ken Follett

In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with. — Thomas Merton

Looking at a pure heart is like looking in to a mirror. All you will see is your own reflection. If you are corrupt, you will see corruption. If you are pure, you will see purity. But don't blame the mirror, all you are seeing is yourself.
- Kambiz Mostofizadeh — Kambiz Mostofizadeh

I have a very specific memory of watching 'Singing in the Rain,' and looking at myself in the mirror after watching it and perceiving myself as one of those people that I was just watching on T.V. It was just kind of a knowing that this would be the world that I would enter into. And that's what I did. — Kat Edmonson

The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there. — Ernest Hemingway,

And she looked upon the mirror that was given as a gift. She hated everything about it, from the circular size of it, to the color, and the wooden frame that held it in place. But mostly, she hated looking at herself. Especially into this one that had a scratch on its glass surface, which would reflect back to her face. And as she looked, it would cut her as the words her father would often say, in telling her she was ugly. — Anthony Liccione

A modern story of Mullah Nasrudin, the Sufi teacher and holy fool, tells of him entering a bank and trying to cash a check. The teller asks him to please identify himself. Nasrudin reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small mirror. Looking into it, he says, "Yep, that's me all right." Meditation — Jack Kornfield

Beautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful even if the surface is ugly. Truthful is he who says what is true even if the truth is ugly. Ugly is he who measures beauty by its exterior without first weighing the interior. And ugly is the man who judges harshly what he sees looking out without first judging what he sees in the mirror. — Suzy Kassem

As I brush my long, brown hair, the girl in the mirror with blue eyes too big for her head stares back at me. Wait ... I don't have blue eyes! Then I realize I haven't been looking into the mirror. I've been staring at a poster of Kristen Stewart for five minutes. My own hair is actually fine. — Andrew Shaffer

When I see myself in the videogame it's amazing how realistic I look. This is the most authentic and realistic soccer game I have ever seen. It is like I'm looking in a mirror. The attention to detail is incredible. — Claudio Reyna

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not. — Simone Weil

I suppose I do get sad, but not for too long. I just look in the mirror and go, 'What a fucking good-looking fuck you are.' And then I brighten up. — Liam Gallagher

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting "Vanity," thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure. — John Berger

As long as I'm between home and the clinic I do all right. But out in the real world, I feel like prey. I slink around and can feel people looking at me. I feel their eyes boring into me. I feel what they're thinking: Watch her, she could go off anytime. But within the walls of my farmhouse, I climb out of the protective shell, my arms slowly rise like a phoenix, and I dance, wail, fly around the room and then collapse, crying, in front of my mirrors. I start to see in the mirror what it is I really look like, instead of what I was trained from the womb to see. I do not write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not know what I am doing. But just like a baby bird, I am blinking once-sealed eyes and unfolding damp wings. I cannot articulate the past. A part of me knows it's there, lurking, just behind what I can acknowledge, but it is not within sight. And I am keeping it that way. — Julie Gregory

Looking into the mirror I ask myself:
"You live in a house equipped with air conditioning.
You eat tasty food.
You utilize convenient transportation to travel.
You utilize convenient information technology to live.
Could you not say that you, who do all this, are not a dictator?
Isn't it right that you life is supported by somebody else's death?
Doesn't your life that exists at the expense of somebody else's sacrifice infinitely resemble the life of a dictator who only cares about his own life?"
-Yasumasa Morimura (excerpt from "Mr. Morimura's Dictator Speech"). — Marinella Venanzi

We literally are all made out of stardust. We started from those stars; we are made of stardust. So, next time you are really depressed, look in the mirror and you can look and say, 'Hi, I'm looking at a star here.' — Charles Elachi

Sometimes you stand under the hot gush for so long, looking at your body, counting every bruise. Touching every tender place. Watching the swirl at your feet, the glitter spinning. Like a mermaid shedding her scales.
You're really just trying to get your heart to slow down.
You think, This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly.
After, you stand in front of the steaming mirror, the fuchsia streaks gone, the lashes unsparkled. And it's just you there, and you look like no one you've ever seen before. You don't look like anybody at all. — Megan Abbott

I don't remember looking like this in the mirror this morning. Obviously, I still had my 'Tru looks awesome in anything' margarita goggles still on. — Samantha Towle

Looking back in front of me, in the mirror a grin. Through eyes of love I see, I'm only looking at a friend. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

A face stared up at her from the mirror beside her hand. Was that really what she looked like? Was that really what she looked like, all sharp lines and huge silver-grey eyes? Certainly, no one would ever call those features beautiful, Jame thought ruefully; but were they really enough like a boy's to have fooled that old man the alley? Well, maybe with that long black hair out of sight under a cap. It was a very young face and a defiant one, she thought with a odd sense of detachment, but frightened, too. And those extraordinary eyes ... what memories lived in them that she could not share? Stranger, where have you been she asked silently. What have you seen? The thin lips locked in their secrets.
"Ahhh!" Jame said in sudden disgust, tossing away the mirror. Fool, to be obsessed with a past she couldn't even remember. But it was all behind her now. — P.C. Hodgell

We should therefore, with grace and optimism, embrace NOMA's tough-minded demand: Acknowledge the personal character of these human struggles about morals and meanings, and stop looking for definite answers in nature's construction. But many people cannot bear to surrender nature as a "transitional object"
a baby's warm blanket for adult comfort. But when we do (for we must), nature can finally emerge in her true form: not as a distorted mirror of our needs, but as our most fascinating companion. Only then can we unite the patches built by our separate magisteria into a beautiful and coherent quilt called wisdom. — Stephen Jay Gould

It's like looking into a full-length mirror and seeing nothing but pure beauty in the reflection ... and then watching helplessly as it shatters into a thousand pieces before your eyes, knowing that you can do nothing to keep it from breaking ... — J. Sterling

Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray.
When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,
my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?
Through the birches, I could see the pond.
The sun was cutting small white holes in the water.
I got up finally; I walked down to the pond.
I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself,
like a girl after her first lover
turning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign.
But nakedness in women is always a pose.
I was not transfigured. I would never be free. — Louise Gluck

Some Me of Beauty

I took a good long look at myself in a full length mirror
Sometimes it's good to look in a full length mirror
And what I saw was not some soul sister poetess of the moment
But I saw just a woman
Just a woman feeling
Just a woman human
And what I felt was
What I felt was a spiritual revelation
And what I felt was a root revival of some love coming on
Coming on strong
And I knew then, looking in a full length mirror,
That many things were over
And some me of beauty was about to begin — Carolyn Rodgers

No more looking at a wall and pretending it's a mirror. No more shelving fiction in the non-fiction section. No more thinking I could get away with it. — David Levithan

In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer - at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction ("Don't look in the mirror, Russ, it'll fuck your head up." Mental note: "Look in mirror."). I saw that my face wasn't my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I'd taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature. Not me, little ol' Russ, tossed about on turbulent seas; these distinctions were engineered. — Russell Brand

For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated suspension the whole hot day. We lived for music, we lived for Beauty, and we were poor. But we didn't care where we were living, or what we had to do during the day to make it possible; eventually, if you waited long enough, you were finally standing before the mirror in that cheap room, looking at your face one last time, like an actor going onstage, before rushing out to walk in the door of that discotheque and see someone like Malone. — Andrew Holleran

Debates about the imagination and its role in human knowledge go back in the West to ancient Greece around the secrets and enigmas of the revealed "symbol" and its relationship to the more plodding ways of reason and rational knowledge. The most recent chapter of that larger conversation goes back to the eighteenth century and what we now call the Romantic movement. The poets and philosophers of the latter asked: What is the imagination? Is it simply a spinner of fantasies? Or can it also become a "window" of revealed truths from some other deeper part of the soul or world? Or, better yet, like some secret two-way mirror in a modern-day police station, is the imagination both, depending on whether one is looking at or through its reflecting surface, that is, depending on which side of it one is standing? Can one stand on both sides? — Whitley Strieber

I scurry out to the three-way mirror. With an extra-large sweatshirt over the top, you can hardly tell that they are Effert's jeans. Still no Mom. I adjust the mirror so I can see reflections of reflections, miles and miles of me and my new jeans. I hook my hair behind my ears. I should have washed it. My face is dirty. I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere? A thousand eyes blink. No makeup. Dark circles. I pull the side flaps of the mirror in closer, folding myself into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store. My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into dissecting cubes. I saw a movie once where a woman was burned over eighty percent of her body and they had to wash all the dead skin off. They wrapped her in bandages, kept her drugged, and waited for skin grafts. They actually sewed her into a new skin. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now! — Alan Bennett

I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror. — Lewis Black

I used to hate looking in the mirror. I've grown up into myself and now I'm happy with the way I look. — Ashley Tisdale

That Seaman is a handsome young man but he spends too much time looking in his mirror rather than at the ball. You can't keep goal with hair like that. — Brian Clough

Part of the rediscovery process is figuring out what you think about the person looking back at you in the mirror. — Catherine Garrett

Not at all. It's why people come. They say it's about looking smart, or beautiful, or professional, but it's not. Gray-haired ladies try to recapture their former brunette. Brunettes want to go blond. Other women go for colors that don't arise in
nature. Each group thinks it's completely different than the others, but I don't see it that way. I've watched them looking at themselves in the mirror, and they're not interested in conforming or rebelling, they just want to walk out of here feeling like themselves again. — Antony John

The main thing you can change is how you perceive yourself. Stop looking in the mirror and realize that you're living for yourself, not other people ... I have belly fat like everybody else, and I don't want to be airbrushed on the cover of a magazine. I don't want someone to swap out my stomach with a supermodel. I don't want dirty old men looking at me in my underwear. — Amanda Seyfried

When I left, they were stuck with the burden of finding someone else to blame for their life ... Pointing their anger everywhere, but never looking in the mirror ... Continuing the cycle that led to their misery. — Steve Maraboli

Loneliness is an old friend standing beside you in the mirror, looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. you can't find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you're not enough, never enough never ever enough . — Tahereh Mafi

He's not your type."
Peabody's face clouded exactly as it had when Eve had rejected the perfume. "How come - I like looking at his type."
"Sure, but try to have a conversation with him." Eve dipped her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. "Guy's in love with himself and figures every woman who gets a load of him has to go moony eyed - just like you're doing. He'd bore you to death in ten minutes because all he'd talk about is himself - how he looks, what he does, what he likes. You'd just be his latest accessory."
Peabody considered, watching as the gold-tipped Adonis posed at the check-in counter. "Okay, so we won't bother to talk. We'll just have sex."
"He'd be a lousy lay - wouldn't give a damn if you got off or not."
"I'm getting off just looking at him." But she sighed when he took out a small silver-backed mirror and examined his face with obvious delight. "It's times like this I hate it when you're right. — J.D. Robb

There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I'm startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head. — John Banville

Except for a couple of hours
in the morning
which I passed in the company
of a sage
I stayed in bed
without food
only a few mouthfuls of water
"you are a fine looking old man"
I said to myself in the mirror
"and what is more
you have the correct attitude
You don't care if it ends
or if it goes on
And as for the women
and the music
there will be plenty of that
in Paradise"
Then I went to the Mosque
of Memory
to express my gratitude — Leonard Cohen

Looking in the mirror to check if my tie is straight is a waste of my time. I only look in the mirror once a day, and that's in the morning when I shave. — Lennart Meri

Poetry looking in the mirror sees art, and art looking in a mirror sings poetry. — Aberjhani

When it comes to exercise, everybody has to find what works for them. I watch my body. I look at myself in the mirror once a week - not because I'm vain, but I'm looking for moles and changes in my body. — Montel Williams

Ty removed his fingers from Zane's back as he saw the shiver run through him, and he pressed his lips tightly together, looking up and away in disgust as he resigned himself to what he was about to do. Broaching the subject could possibly cost him his job if Zane went tattling to the higher-ups about sexual harassment or some shit, but Ty was going to do it anyway. "Anything you need to say to me?"
...
The visual of Ty's nude body flashed behind Zane's eyelids, and he spoke before he thought better of it. "Nothing you want to hear," he murmured as he faced the mirror, hoping to diffuse the situation. "Thanks for the help," he added, wanting desperately to get away from this tension.
...
"You sure about that?" Ty asked as his stomach fluttered nervously. His voice finally betrayed the nerves. "Trying to be a real partner to you here, Zane. If you need to tell me something, then here's your chance. — Abigail Roux

I open my eyes and for the first time stare openly at my own reflection. My heart rate picks up as I do, like I am breaking the rules and will be scolded for it. It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.
... Looking at myself now isn't like seeing myself for the first time; it's like seeing someone else for the first time. Beatrice was a girl I saw in stolen moments at the mirror, who kept quiet at the dinner table. This is someone whose eyes claim mine and don't release me; this is Tris. — Veronica Roth

She wasn't looking at herself in the glass, but out at a great silver moon hanging beyond a thin metal balcony that looked over the grey towers of a human city. — Denny B. Reese

Looking in the mirror, I saw a joyful face. And this happy girl was just about to go on a trip, with a one way ticket in her bag. Life was a never ending journey. — Nico J. Genes

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors. — Tennessee Williams

She looked fragile. Alone. Prisoner in the room through the mirror; an Alice who never made it back through the looking-glass. — Joss Stirling

Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. — Anita Roddick

Looking at oneself in a mirror is a self-canceling phenomenon. Eyes looking into eyes make a hole which spreads out and renders one invisible. I had seen more of myself in that single glimpse of a ghostly image in the pier mirror, not knowing it was I. — Walker Percy

There's no denying the fact he is really, really good-looking, in this rakish, edgy, badass, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-screw-you-I-don't-need-a-mirror kind of way. — Hannah Harrington

When you were little, what inspired you to feel this way?' Then he paused and asked, 'Looking in the mirror and having it crack in two?'
Instead of clobbering him, I laughed-the kind of laugh that escapes into the air before you can catch it. The kind of chuckle that shows a tiny form of acceptance.
Trevor obviously didn't expect me to find his remark entertaining. He was primed for a fight. We both cracked up and locked eyes. His gaze lingered a little too long, not in a creepy way, but in a way that says I'm not ready to let this moment go. — Ellen Schreiber

Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I'd done so often - weighing what I could afford to risk, right at that moment - that I recognized it instantly. It was like looking in a mirror. — Sarah Dessen

Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine cannonry of their own farting. Only in sleep is silence tolerated, and even there, most dreams have soundtracks. Since meditation is a deliberate descent into deep internal hush, a mute stare into the ultimate looking glass, it is regarded with suspicion by the nattering masses; with hostility by buisness interests (people sitting in silent serenity are seldom consuming goods); and with spite by a clergy whose windy authority it is seen to undermine and whose bombastic livelihood it is perceived to threaten. — Tom Robbins

As we pass the mirror in the bedroom, my attention is drawn to the lovely couple in the reflection. There is a man, tall with broad shoulders. His red hair cut short. He has nothing but a towel on. In his arms is a female, slender but muscular. Her wheat colored hair is pulled back in a neat bun on top of her head. Both of their skin is smooth and flawless, a little paler than most, but still complete perfection. You can tell by the way the man holds her, he cares a lot for her. You can also tell that he is afraid of holding her too tight, not wanting to crush her smaller frame into his body. Looking at this young pair in the mirror, one can only wonder of all the possibilities. What led them to this place? What is in store for them? Will there be a happy ending? — Elle A. Rose

I avoid looking in the mirror. — Marina Warner

Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?"
They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees - Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.
The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness. — J.K. Rowling

The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything. — Saul Bellow

You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with ever modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your own face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candlelight, when all the house is still. — Hope Mirrlees

Because I hated myself so much for my fatness, I always looked for other fat people, and especially for fatter people, to judge as harshly as the world seemed to be judging me. And you know what? There was always someone fatter who was more disgusting than I was, more not with it, and more lazy. It helped me validate myself as mis-seen, misunderstood, and misevaluated. It also helped me find some sort of weird self-esteem that I never could find when looking at myself in the mirror. — Dan Pearce

As a teenager I clearly remember mornings when I was getting ready for school when something would -just still me- and
I would lean forward and peer very intensely into the eyes of the girl in that mirror.
who is that? I didn't know . I looked into those eyes as if they had the answer to who I am
or who I could be.
So I would search the depths of those green and blue flecked eyes.
Calmly searching the eyes of this stranger as if I thought that if I looked deep enough, or long enough, I would find the answer to why I was even here.
I didn't know what I know now.
That I could only find out my identity,
who I was
when I stopped looking into my own eyes
and instead searched in the eyes of Jesus. Only He could REALLY tell me who I am. Who I can be. Who I will be ... — Laura A. Diaz

Granuaile looked terminally depressed when she emerged from the bathroom with raven hair and, as a result rather Goth by accident. She didn't want to get her picture taken.
"Aughh!" she said miserably, looking in the vanity mirror in the truck of the cab and fingering a wavy curl near her temple. "This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before. You know what we look like? A couple of emo douche bags."
"Well, look at the bright side, Granuaile. Emo Douche Bags would be a great band name."
[That's brilliant! It's already the unofficial name of more bands than I can count.] — Kevin Hearne

You are the most powerful army in the world; you are the future of this planet. You cannot, you will not spend one more minute of your time looking in a mirror wishing you looked different. — Jamie Le Fay

Now," she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow
for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to pt it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth. — Virginia Woolf

The kid's driving me bat-shit," Cam complained as he stalked into the kitchen. "You can't say boo to him without him squaring up for a fight."
"Mm-hmm."
"Argumentative, smart-mouthed, troublemaker."
"Must be like looking in a mirror."
"Like hell."
"Don't know what I was thinking of. You're such a peaceable soul. — Nora Roberts

I DIDN'T KNOW what she was thinking or feeling. Her body had become unfamiliar to me. And yet, at the very same time, I recognized everything about her. My sister, Fern. In the whole wide world, my only red poker chip. As if I were looking in a mirror. — Karen Joy Fowler