Moment Of Reflection Quotes & Sayings

The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image. — Charles W. Chesnutt

If I could only teach you one thing about the world, it would be to Appreciate and be as present as possible in every moment. Take everything in and try and learn from it. No matter how tangled things get, there is always a lesson to be learned in the untangling of those things. — Bethany Brookbank

BREATHE
Mindful breathing is a basic wonderful pleasure for life. Breathing calms our body and mind to unify our soul within the present moment. Breathing is a supreme gift from Mother Nature, giving universal pranic energy which one guides within.

BELIEVE
Intentions, wishes and dreams can come true. Not necessarily all at once, but herein lies the splendour of life's journey. The secret tonic to success is belief and imagination, blended with confidence to open your heart and follow your dreams.

BE
Savadhyaya is the practice of inward reflection, honest self-observation and learning. Whatever you do, wherever you are, find contentment and simply be there, because that's exactly where you need to be. — Eva

I can hold a cup of sake on a full moon in Japan, and the reflection of the moon in that little cup can make me feel so enthusiastic about beauty. That one good, magical moment can give me enough to create other things like the teardrop earring or necklace. — Elsa Peretti

The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven. — Susan Griffin

He just has to step away from the moment to see it. Which isn't surprising. Lots of parents will tell you that when they aren't fighting with their teenagers about homework or scraping up raisins their toddlers have expertly ground into the kitchen floor, they're quite happy, upon reflection. — Jennifer Senior

Both men accepted that the nature of the request, its intimacy and self-conscious reflection on their friendship, had created, for the moment, an uncomfortable emotional proximity which was best dealt with by their parting without another word. — Ian McEwan

When you look upon another human being and feel great love toward them, or when you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of that love or that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence. That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will. — Eckhart Tolle

And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed. — Edgar Allan Poe

In Zen, such a glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion. — Eckhart Tolle

Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Excitement is simple: excitement is a situation, a single event. It mustn't be wrapped up in thoughts, similes, metaphors. A simile is a form of reflection, but excitement is of the moment when there is no time to reflect. Action can only be expressed by a subject, a verb and an object, perhaps rhythm -- little else. Even an adjective slows the pace or tranquilizes the nerve. — Graham Greene

Though I was standing in front of a mirror, I wasn't really seeing my reflection. I was seeing, very clearly, that - at the moment - I was all in the world that Eric could think of as his own. I had better not fail him. — Charlaine Harris

It carried quite a wallop. I have all the classic symptoms. Reflection. Where am I now? Where have I come from? What's important? Dealing with the moment of a different kind of feeling for mortality. Shifting of the body. Contextualizing or reevaluating behaviors and values. All those kinds of things. — Keanu Reeves

I always considered an idle Life, as a real evil, but, a life of such hurry, such constant hurry, leaves us scarcely a moment for reflection or for the discharge of any other then the most immediate and pressing concerns. — Edward Rutledge

His bedroom was a reflection of Bryant's mind, its untidy shelves filled with games and puzzles stacked in ancient boxes, statues and mementoes competing for space with books on every subject imaginable, from Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology to Illustrated British Ballads and A History of Indian Philosophy.
"What are you reading at the moment?' asked May.
"Batman," said Bryant. "The drawings are terribly good. — Christopher Fowler

Vor stared for a moment at his own reflection in the familiar mirrored face, remembering some of the stupid jokes his friend had told and the innovative military games they had played together. Seurat had never harmed him in any way. — Brian Herbert

Iren broke the moment of quiet reflection. "He was a bad captian"

"But a worse bird" said Voleta.

Man, what a thing to say after a dude falls to his death. — Josiah Bancroft

He went farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a 'lass unaparalleled. — Marcel Proust

The most evocative life memories, which produced a synesthesia of emotions, consist of a host of small pleasures intertwined with the homespun stitches of love, affection, kindness, humility, and appreciation of nature. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Happiness is a reflection of how you perceive the moment — Jane Emery

An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do. — Russell Hoban

Learn to see that it is not things that bother us, that we go out to bother them. See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of the mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and brings understanding. — Ajahn Chah

In life, we must choose to quiet ourselves and go through a period of reflection, an instance in time for evaluating our strengths vs. our weaknesses, an interval in time for recognizing the real from deceit, a moment in time for making necessary life adjustments for personal welfare. It's through such, we begin to know ourselves. — D. Allen Miller

What I have always liked best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he'd done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember. Which is why drivers compulsively record their every move, their every race, with cockpit cameras, in-car video, data mapping; a driver cannot be a witness to his own greatness. This is what Danny says. He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. The great champion Julian Sabella Rosa has said: When I am racing, my mind and my body are working so quickly and so well together, I must be sure not to think, or else I will definitely make a mistake. — Garth Stein

When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start. — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

If we come to sleep
we are His drowsy ones
And if we come to wake
we are in His hands
If we come to weeping
we are His cloud full of raindrops
And if we come to laughing
we are His lightning in that moment
If we come to anger and battle
it is the reflection of His wrath
And if we come to peace and pardon
it is the reflection of His love
Who are we in this complicated world? — Rumi

When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. — Jeff Bezos

Like a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment. — Rob Bell

Two thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper, read things written in this tone every morning and every night, are every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end and aim of it all is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All that is perfectly clear and simple. Anyone could comprehend it and reach the same conclusion after a moment's reflection. But nobody wants to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he has in the world's confusions and wickedness - clearly, nobody wants to do that. And so there's no stopping it, and the next war is being pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands upon thousands day by day. — Hermann Hesse

Here was food for reflection: Kitty had never heard the Chinese spoken of as anything but decadent, dirty, and unspeakable. It was as though the corner of a curtain were lifted for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of a world rich with a color and significance she had not dreamt of. — W. Somerset Maugham

I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Gratitude is a feeling not statement. It is so easy to say we are grateful that I often don't stop to really, really take the time to experience gratitude. Saying the words doesn't mean a thing without the feeling and it takes a moment of genuine reflection to summon that feeling. This Thanksgiving don't shortchange yourself with hollow words. — Michael Josephson

And suddenly I realize that all those books and movies had gotten it wrong.

When you find your souls reflection in another, you shouldn't be aware of anything other than their body, yours, and the space between.

You shouldn't be looking for someone whose kiss causes you to escape reality by transporting you to another time and place.

Look for the person whose kiss grounds you firmly in the moment, whose arms hold you safely in the now. — A.J. Compton

A ghost-memory rises, here: a phantom moment, a shaky reflection in the pool of remembrance. I know how it felt when the scavengers took my heart. How it felt as the hunger birds, all mouth, tore into my chest and snatched out my heart, still pumping, and devoured it to get at what was hidden inside it. I know how that feels, as if it was truly a part of my life, of my death. And then the memory snips and rips, neatly, and - — Neil Gaiman

Whatever their story, Eve was breathing easy now - for the moment forgetful, vulnerable, at peace. It's a purposeful irony of life, I suppose, that we never get to see ourselves in that state. We can only pay witness to our waking reflection, which to one degree or another is always fretting or afraid. Maybe that's why young parents find it so beguiling to spy on their children when they're fast asleep. — Amor Towles

I was only then, when I knew I was alone, at least for the moment, that I reached under my gown into the pocket of my dress. As I pulled out my key from the yellow house, which I'd kept on my bureau since the day Nate left, I traced the shape one last time before folding my hand tightly around it.
Behind me, Cora was calling again. My family was waiting. Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. I stepped closer to the edge, keeping my eyes on my reflection as I dropped the key into the water, where it landed with a splash. At first, the fish darted away, but as it began to sink they circled back, gathering around. Together, they followed it down, down until it was gone.<3 — Sarah Dessen

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication. — W. Somerset Maugham

When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts emplaced in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retroreflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be librating, or quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno was gouged out less than a thousand years ago. — Carl Sagan

Our observer is not affected by emotional ups and downs, our personal life dramas, or by the events of the external world. It is our observer, at the core of our being, that teaches us to let go as we begin identify with it rather than with all the hubbub of our moment-to-moment experience and our mental chatter about it. — Marcey Shapiro

My physical transformations - like changing my hair - are usually a reflection of what's inspiring me at the moment. — Madonna Ciccone

Do you know something about the broken people? They are exactly like a mirror that is been punched and dropped on the floor into pieces and been joined back together. When you stand in front of them they create hundreds of your reflections, but still none of them complete and the moment you try to touch them they will try to hurt you, not because they don't like your reflection in them, it is just because they are afraid of falling again and breaking into more pieces. If you could only see how it feels to be that broken mirror you would never do something that would break a mirror again. — Akshay Vasu

It is so obvious to every reasonable being that he did not make himself, and the world in which he inhabits could as little make itself, that the moment we begin to exercise the power of reflection, it seems impossible to escape the conviction that there is a Creator. — John Quincy Adams

I touched my lips to hers again, and this time, it was a very different sort of kiss. It was six years' worth of kissing, her lips coming to life under mine, tasting of orange and of desire. Her fingers ran through my sideburns and into my hair before linking around my neck, alive and cool on my warm skin. I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once. For once in my human life, my mind didn't wander to compose a song lyric or store the moment for later reflection. For once in my life, I was here and nowhere else. -Sam — Maggie Stiefvater

What a smile! I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge;" scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb. CHAPTER — Charlotte Bronte

My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words. — Shakira

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray. — Vincent Van Gogh

The idea that I really like is December 21st, 2012. Try to get a global moment of collective reflection as a way to bring about an uptick in human consciousness. — Daniel Pinchbeck

At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun climbed over the skyline of oaks, revealing its full summer angry-god self. Its reflection flared across the river toward our house, a long, blaring finger aimed at me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been seen. You will be seen. — Gillian Flynn

Love enters the heart unawares: takes precedence of all the emotions
or, at least, will be second to none
and even reflection becomes its accomplice. While it lives, it renders blind; and when it has struck its roots deep only itself can shake them. It reminds one of hospitality as practiced among the ancients. The stranger was received upon the threshold of the half-open door, and introduced into the sanctuary reserved for the Penates. Not until every attention had been lavished upon him did the host ask his name; and the question was sometimes deferred till the very moment of departure. — Sophie Swetchine

To show what is still needed, let us examine how an ideal system might reason about the burglar alarm situation of Figure 1.2. Upon receiving the phone call from your neighbor, only the burglary hypothesis is triggered; your decision whether to drive home or stay at work is made solely on the basis of the parameter P(False alarm), which summarizes all other (unexplicated) causes for an alarm sound. After a moment's reflection, the possibility of an April Fools' Day joke may — Judea Pearl

No one can make you 'better' emotionally, mentally, spiritually or physically. You have to find this for yourself. You have to taste that brutal moment when you're crying in a corner of the room, curled up on the floor and you think this is your end. You have to fight to stand up, literally. And you have to walk over to your reflection and scream, scream it all out. Then you have pick up your sword and fight and never quit. This is your life. Don't let those bastards win. — Crystal Woods

I am left to wonder, will anyone else see it?
That day in the forest when I looked upon the marble bear, alive with the setting sun, what did I witness? Was it only sunlight on stone, or Father's spirit, or a reflection of my own?
It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself. — Eowyn Ivey

But intelligence is not just a matter of acting or behaving intelligently. Behavior is a manifestation of intelligence, but not the central characteristic or primary definition of being intelligent. A moment's reflection proves this: You can be intelligent just lying in the dark, thinking and understanding. Ignoring what goes on in your head and focusing instead on behavior has been a large impediment to understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines — Jeff Hawkins

It seems to me that the quality of a moment in time is not always a reflection of the moment in and of itself - what happens before and what happens after are often what give it its savor. — Michael J. Fox

We are about to understand, but have not yet understood. This moment is important because it generally does not lie up to its promise. We abandon the process of reflection. Not much of a decision about the personal meaning of love, justice or success is achieved, and we move on to something else. Looking at Twombly's painting assists us in a crucial thought: 'The part of me that wonders about important questions and then gets confused has not had enough recognition — Alain De Botton

Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits. — Ernst Cassirer

Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck. — Roger Zelazny

There are so many things Blair doesn't get about me, so many things she ultimately overlooked, and things that she would never know, and there would always be a distance between us because there were too many shadows everywhere. Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away - I now want to explain all these things to her but I know I never will, the most important one being: I never liked anyone and I'm afraid of people. — Bret Easton Ellis

I saw bubbling lava, and at the same moment I saw a reflection of a certain kind of inner turmoil. Because at the moment I looked into that crater, I slipped, and a large piece of volcanic rock took a hole out of my leg. The scar is still there 20, 30 years later. But it's one of those things that reminds you of the kind of risk or the kind of moment in order to push yourself. — Julie Taymor

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past
to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority's whims and the minority's rights. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Some realizations can only come from truly looking into the mirror. However, the only thing that the mirror can show one of a false face is the moment before death. Who truly looks into the mirror and sees the painting within it? Who looks into the reflection beyond the looking-glass and see the truth hidden within it? All it takes is one look into the mirror, to come to a realization of truth. But those that do not see the truth, simply falls into another illusion - within an endless refrain. — Lionel Suggs

If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on which they stamp their imprint? I believe that genius, thus awakened, has no need to seek out details, that it scarcely pauses to reflect, that it never thinks of unity: I believe that the details come naturally without search by the poet, that inspiration takes the place of reflection and as for unity, I think there is no unity so perfect as that which results from a heart filled with a single idea ... The nature of genius is related to that of instinct; it's operation is both simple and marvelous. — Charlotte Bronte

Reflection is the souls moment to embrace a memory, bury it deep in your heart and allow the echoes of the memory to beat with your heart. — Lisa Elliott

A moment's reflection will show you that you play many roles in the course of a day . . . and that who you are from moment to moment changes. There is the angry you, and the kind you, the lazy you, the lustful you - hundreds of different you's. Gurdjieff points out that sometimes one "you" does something for which all the other "you's" must pay for years or possibly the rest of this life. — Ram Dass

A moment of prayerful reflection can prevent a lifetime of bitter regret. — Woodrow M. Kroll

Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down and things may be different tomorrow but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. — Steve Jobs

Beyond a certain age, a journey across the city becomes uncomfortably reflective ... One day I too will prompt a moment's reflection in the passenger of a passing cab. — Ian McEwan

At some second transcendent moment in evolution, Edelman proposed, the development of "higher-order consciousness" was made possible in humans (and perhaps a few other species including apes and dolphins) by a higher level of reentrant signaling. Higher-order consciousness brings an unprecedented power of generalization and reflection, of recognizing past and future, so that finally self-consciousness, the awareness of being a self in the world, is achieved. — Oliver Sacks

An increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction, and above all it is certain that for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, simply because they are so dialectical and the result of one clever discovery may give the whole question a new turn, because at any moment reflection is capable of explaining everything quite differently and allowing one some way of escape; because at the last moment of a reflective decision reflection is capable of changing everything
after one has made far greater exertions than are necessary to get a man of character into the midst of things. — Soren Kierkegaard

He had only just made the Elysian deadline; hanging onto the typescript until the last moment in case there was something still to be done; two sentences turned into one, one sentence broken into two, the substitution of a slightly resistant adjective to engender a moment's reflection, in short, the joys of editing, all carried out without forgetting the art that disguises art. — Edward St. Aubyn

A moment of sadness is the best time for deepest reflection. — Debasish Mridha

Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment. — William Hazlitt

We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers - but where are the great lovers? After a moment's reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or Anthony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend. — Henry Miller

We sat there in silence for a while, just taking in the moment of reflection between us. It's funny how a woman feels different to a man. They feel nice and soft, but because there isn't that spark of attraction there it's more of a sisterly or maternal warmth that you feel from them. It's wonderful. And it brings out this strange protective streak that seems borne from intuition if you have man parts, regardless of whether your man parts like other men's parts. And I wanted to protect Fran. — Sean Kennedy

If we can change from that deeper place - for instance, if I am constantly going around telling myself and everybody that I'm a failure and I'm worthless, that's a reflection of the thoughts I'm having. The moment that I'm able to shift at the level of my mind and start seeing that I have something to offer, life is important, and I want to contribute, then that tiny subtle shift from the inside can have a profound affect on my external life. — MC Yogi

Aww, the sound of waves crashing along the ocean side and spraying back up to touch the wind only for a moment, then to fall back down becoming the ocean once more... — Melanie Kilsby

Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love.
A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species. — P.G. Wodehouse

Once we have a sense of how long a decision should take, we generally should delay the moment of decision until the last possible instant. If we have an hour, we should wait 59 minutes before responding. If we have a year, we should wait 364 days. Even if we have just half a second, we should wait as long as we possibly can ... Life might be a race against time but it is enriched when we rise above our instincts and stop the clock to process and understand what we are doing and why. A wise decision requires reflection, and reflection requires a pause. — Frank Partnoy

She had gone to the state fair in Columbus once with her sister Clarice and they had gotten lost in the House of Mirrors and Clarice's purse had been stolen by a man who had pretended to be a reflection until the very last moment. — David Foster Wallace

To tolerate existence, we lie, and we lie above all to ourselves. Sometimes we tell ourselves lovely tales, sometimes petty lies. Falsehoods protect us, mitigate suffering, allow us to avoid the terrifying moment of serious reflection, they dilute the horrors of our time, they even save us from ourselves. — Elena Ferrante

Pink Friday is a celebration of my life at this moment; it is a reflection of me as a creator, and an expression of me as a woman, — Nicki Minaj

To leave the thread of all time
And let it make a dark line
In hopes that I can still find
The way back to the moment
I took the turn and turned to
Begin a new beginning
Still looking for the answer
I cannot find the finish
It's either this or that way
It's one way or the other
It should be one direction
It could be on reflection
The turn I have just taken
The turn that I was making
I might be just beginning
I might be near the end.


— Enya

When you are a young person, you are like a young creek, and you meet many rocks, many obstacles and difficulties on your way. You hurry to get past these obstacles and get to the ocean. But as the creek moves down through the fields, it becomes larges and calmer and it can enjoy the reflection of the sky. It's wonderful. You will arrive at the sea anyway so enjoy the journey. Enjoy the sunshine, the sunset, the moon, the birds, the trees, and the many beauties along the way. Taste every moment of your daily life. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I like getting my ideas from the things of now. I am very conscious of the moment, of images that belong to this moment instead of another period. Fashion is really a reflection of our lives. You see women today and they don't do their hair up; they all wear their hair undone. So you have to reflect that in your photography . — Mario Testino

He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. — Garth Stein

It had rained, she said, and I imagined the beads of small water on the windshield like a thousand eyes, or each drop a small imperfect reflection of a perfect moment. — Simon Van Booy

He seemed to become aware of a dark, imponderable force pushing him left when he meant to go right or pulling him back when he meant to go forward. Until that moment, he
would have felt certain that his actions had never been subject to restraint
by others. He had been certain that he did whatever he did of his own
accord, that everything he said he intended to say. — Soseki Natsume

You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you; I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage. — Anais Nin

After I took Lisa's braces off, we climbed out of my bedroom window onto the roof of the porch below, smoked cigarettes in our nightgowns, and talked about boys. If I had tried that summer to imagine what my future would look like, it would have been as much a mystery to me then as my own reflection in those cutoff shorts. This is what I understand now that I could not have seen then: When you grow up in a home where nobody goes to work, where nobody is married, in a place where there are few jobs and few opportunities, you do not stay up late whispering about weddings and college and careers. You live in that moment, or maybe in the next; you do not make decisions that will impact a future that you do not let yourself imagine; you do not make a plan beyond your next pack of cigarettes. — Heather Ross

Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punch line: 'It's easy to be healthy - smoke one less cigarette a month.' We know without a moment's reflection that this campaign would fail," wrote British climate activist and author George Marshall. "The target is so ludicrous, and the disconnection between the images and the message is so great, that most smokers would just laugh it off. — Naomi Klein

A small stream ... sings a carefree song as it runs by your house. It is so nonthreatening that you can sit by it, look at your reflection in the water, and even wash your hands in it. It is yours, your personal stream. Yet you know that it has originated in the sea and is on its way back to where it has come from. When passing by your house, however, it is yours. You can say it is a personal moment you have torn out of eternity to keep in your pocket for yourself. — Fatemeh Keshavarz

It's exemplification of our moment in American culture and American cultural journalism. It is an accurate document of the discourse of "takes." This movie, that book, this poem, that painting, this record, that show: Make a smart remark and move on. A take is an opinion that has no aspiration to a belief, an impression taht never hardens into a position. Its lightness is its appeal. It is provisional, evanescent, a move in a game, an accredited shallowness, a bulwark against a pause in the conversation. A take is expected not to be true but to be interesting, and even when it is interesting it makes no troublesome claim upon anybody's attention. Another take will quickly follow, and the silence that is a mark of perplexity, of research and reflection, will be mercifully kept at bay. A take asks for no affiliation. It requires no commitment. — Leon Wieseltier