People Are Mirrors Quotes & Sayings

They say dogs ignore their reflections in mirrors because they can't smell them. Dogs, unlike people, are not fooled by what they see. — Theodore Sturgeon

Such people are trapped in their own hall of mirrors, and for them there is no escape. They can never know whether they are wrong, even when they are. No evidence, no logic, no reason will ever get through to them. — Richard Carrier

My dancers must be able to do anything, and I don't care if they are black or white or purple or green. I want to help show my people how beautiful they are. I want to hold up the mirror to my audience that says this is the way people can be, this is how open people can be. — Alvin Ailey

Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mercurial emotional life and temperament. It has been with my pleasure, and not-inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth - from my husband, the man with whom I had lived for almost a decade. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Any big hotels have got scandals," he said. "Just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go. Sometimes one of em will pop off in his room, heart attack or stroke or something like that. Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that. [ ... ] — Stephen King

As we move away from the old role in which we were helplessly entrapped as a victim, we make friends with the people who affirm us. Their enthusiasm about us mirrors the positive experience we are having. — Maureen Brady

Are you sure about that? Because I manipulated your adviser today, and countless guards. I manipulated Wolf. I ... I killed a police officer, in France, and I would have killed more people if I'd had to, people in your own military, and I don't even know if I would feel bad about it, because there are always ways to justify it. It's for the good of everyone, isn't it? Sacrifices have to be made. And then there are the mirrors, such a stupid, stupid thing, but they - I'm beginning to get it. Why she hates them so much. And then - " She shuddered. "Today, I tortured her thaumaturge. — Marissa Meyer

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. — Gail Buckley

All the comics are sigils. "Sigil" as a word is out of date. All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it's not what people are being told it is at all. It's not all this wearying symbolic misdirection that's being dragged up from the Victorian Age, when no-one was allowed to talk plainly and everything was in coy poetic code. The world's at a crisis point and it's time to stop bullshitting around with Qabalah and Thelema and Chaos and Information and all the rest of the metaphoric smoke and mirrors designed to make the rubes think magicians are 'special' people with special powers. It's not like that. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. "Life" plus "significance" = magic. — Grant Morrison

Take a few minutes now and see your current circumstances- your physical condition, your emotional condition, your possessions, your financial condition, where and how you live, your relationships, the situations surrounding your life, and the way you believe other people see you- as mirrors showing you "Who You Are. — Chris Prentiss

People are always calling me a mirror and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see? — Andy Warhol

I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that. — James Lovegrove

This is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond ... We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy ... As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone. — Muriel Barbery

We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were able to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy. — Muriel Barbery

Some people think I am an issue-oriented writer, but I've never said to myself, I'm gong to write about such-and-such an issue - that would make for incredibly boring writing, at least to my taste. Creating someone I don't know and her made-up world shows us more about who we are - is actually a better mirror - than if I were to parade in front of you an instantly recognizable person in an instantly recognizable situation. I'm not saying, Let's make it all abstract and weird and difficult and thereby you will know more about yourself. My process is much more organic than that. — Suzan-Lori Parks

So here we go, you and me. Because what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready. This is America and I am allowed to have healthy self-esteem. This book comes straight from my feisty and freckled fingers. Know it was a battle. Blood was shed. A war raged between my jokey and protective brain and my squishy and tender heart. I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I've grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place. So let's peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth. These are the people I want to be around. This is the honest way I want to live and love and write. — Amy Poehler

My parents are actors as well, so I grew up around that world. It was always a very romantic, mythical world. They did a lot of theater, so to me an actor was getting to come backstage and dressing room mirrors with bulbs around them and trying on people's costumes. It was very exciting to me as a child. — Phoebe Fox

Most people who are on the road are pretty damaged. It's an escapist's life. It's not a life that forces you to look in the mirror at where you're at and what you're doing. It's one where you leave the mirror behind. I think that appeals to something in all of us. On the open road, all of your regrets are out the window. — Gavin Rossdale

If the past few months have taught me anything, it's that friendship is a smoke screen. The people you think are solid turn out to be mirrors and light; and then you look down and realize there are others you took for granted, those who are your foundation. — Jodi Picoult

Denial and affirmation are games which people play.
There are people who deny that they are capable of denying, and who would insist that people do not insist. — Idries Shah

What motivates me is the chance to improve the world in my own special way; to contribute to the fight that all artists are fighting. I want to hold the mirror up to society and help them see themselves more clearly. I also love just making people laugh. — Jinkx Monsoon

Sometimes you have to call people out. Do that a time or two, and they learn pretty quickly how dangerous mirrors are. They rarely like seeing themselves. — Deatri King-Bey

Most people suffer from the self limiting dysfunction "rear-view mirror syndrome" driving through life with their subconscious mind constantly looking in their own self-limiting rear-view mirror. They filter every choice they make through the limitations of their past experiences. Always remember that your potential is TRULY unlimited, and that you are just as worthy, deserving, and capable of achieving everything you want as any other person on earth. — Hal Elrod

The authorities? The authorities?" I laughed. "Why is it people think the authorities are some form of gods with either great justice or great, cunning evil, rather than the same plodding fools they see in their daily lives, and most of all in their mirrors? — Richard Ben Sapir

The new is always made up of the old, or rather, what people see in the new is always the old thing. The rear-view mirror. The future of the future is the present, and this is something that people are terrified of. — Marshall McLuhan

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we. — Diana Wynne Jones

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. — Sydney Harris

My dad finished chewing something and then put his fork down and looked at me. 'The longer I do my job,' he said. 'the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.'
'That is really lovely,' my mom said. I liked that they liked each other. 'But isn't it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.'
'True. Consciousness makes for poor windows, too. I don't think I'd ever thought about it quite that way. — John Green

Now I know that without mirrors we are different, we're not really the same ... Maybe they had noticed us looking worriedly at other people's faces, as if we wee trying to see in them what we had become — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

Children are not cruel. Children are mirrors. They want to be "grownup," so they act how grown-ups act when we think they're not looking. They do not act how we tell them to act at school assemblies. They act how we really act. They believe what we believe. They say what we say. And we have taught them that gay people are not okay. That overweight people are not okay. That Muslim people are not okay. That they are not equal. That they are to be feared. And people hurt the things they fear. We know that. What they are doing in the schools, what we are doing in the media
it's all the same. The only difference is that children bully in the hallways and the cafeterias while we bully from behind pulpits and legislative benches and sitcom one-liners. — Glennon Doyle Melton

To me, Twitter often feels like shouting things into a two-way mirror that I know has people behind it, maybe even people I know, and they are definitely listening, but mostly remain perfectly silent. — Mira Gonzalez

Maybe other people are like mirrors that we see ourselves in; versions of ourselves that vary dramatically depending on the particular cut of glass. — Jonathan Hull

See yourself being a master of gratitude in the future. Mentally picture how this will help you feel joy the moment you are awake and are grateful for being alive. See how you can be grateful and happy for each breath. Realize that when you master gratitude, you will see a happy face every time you look into the mirror. See how your entire quality of life will be improved. See how other people will tell you that they enjoy being around you because you are such a happy person. — Zelig Pliskin

People who are overweight don't want unsolicited advice. Guess what. We know we're fat. We live in homes with mirrors. — Al Roker

The people around you are mirrors, I think.
You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That's how you learn who you are. — Caitlin Moran

Dogs, being wordless, can only be mirrors of their humans. It's not their fault that their people are fatally flawed. — Lauren Groff

All across the multiverse there are backward tribes* who distrust mirrors and images because, they say, they steal a bit of a person's soul and there's only so much of a person to go around. And the people who wear more clothes say this is just superstition, despite the fact that other people who spend their lives appearing in images of one sort or another seem to develop a thin quality. It's put down to over-work and, tellingly, over-exposure instead.
*Considered backward, that is, by people who wear more clothes than they do. — Terry Pratchett

I can lip read, so I know what other people are saying about me - especially when I clock them in my rear view mirror ... — Max Beesley

He stares at the cellist, and feels himself relax as the music seeps into him. He watches as the cellist's hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors ... The building behind the cellist repairs itself. The scars of bullets and shrapnel are covered by plaster and paint, and windows reassemble, clarify and sparkle as the sun reflects off glass. The cobblestones of the road set themselves straight. Around him people stand up taller, their faces put on weight and colour. Clothes gain lost thread, brighten, smooth out their wrinkles. Kenan watches as his city heals itself around him. The cellist continues to play ... — Steven Galloway

I think that when you start your own business you have to be very clear on what you're passionate about and what your values are. I was very passionate about travel and I wanted to inspire other people. At the same time, I knew if I was going to start my own business, it was going to have to mirror my values, and I knew I was passionate about the environment and about sustainability. — Omar Samra

If are in a situation with too many people in your life and you want to go into higher attention, look in the mirror. You are being blocked. Do something about it. It might be hard. — Frederick Lenz

If you want to know why your people are not performing well, step up to the mirror and take a peek. — Ken Blanchard

The press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself. — Isobelle Carmody

Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. — Cherie Carter-Scott

My research suggests that when people get rebuffed they become frustrated and angry, but they would do better to become curious about the reason for the rejection. I also found that people assume that others are like them, operating under the same knowledge, beliefs, constraints and priorities. This mirror assumption makes it easier to speculate about why others act in the way they do, but sometimes the mirror assumption is wrong. — Gary A. Klein

I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I've grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place. So let's peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth. These are the people I want to be around. — Amy Poehler

The purpose of any charity is simply to turn people's mirrors into windows. An outward view of the world's needs are vast in comparison to an inward one. — Shannon L. Alder

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children. — Barack Obama

In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding - in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others. — Mikhail Bakhtin

Since you always lived inside your own head, you were much better at seeing the truth about others than you ever were at seeing yourself. So you navigated your life with the help of others who held up mirrors for you. People praised your good qualities and criticized your bad habits, and these perspectives - often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life. So poorly did you know yourself that you were always surprised at how you looked in photographs or how you sounded on voice mail. In this way, much of your existence took place in the eyes, ears, and fingertips of others. And now that you've left the Earth, you are stored in scattered heads around the globe. Here in this Purgatory, all the people with whom you've ever come in contact are gathered. The scattered bits of you are collected, pooled, and unified. The mirrors are held up in front of you. Without the benefit of filtration, you see yourself clearly for the first time. And that is what finally kills you. — David Eagleman

Recognizing Muhammad
Before Muhammad appeared in form,
there were scriptural references. People imagined how he would be and called
on his presence in battle and sickness. They had thoughts and language about Muhammad.
What good was that? Not everyone recognizes Muhammad. Many have a conception
of him they can stand to live with. They don't know that if the shadow of
Muhammad's true form falls across a wall, the wall will bleed! And it will
no longer have two sides! What a blessing to be one thing. When others saw Muhammad,
their awe evaporated, as counterfeit coins turn black in the flame. There are false
coins who claim they want to be tested, all bravado. And there are touchstones that
do not reveal impostors. There are mirrors that hide your flaws. Avoid hypocritical
praise, and keep away from flattering mirrors, if you possibly can. — Rumi

I only attract loving people in my world for they are a mirror of what I am. — Louise Hay

Everyone we attract into our life is a mirror for us in certain ways. All of our relationships reflect certain parts of us. We all attract certain people into our life who have developed qualities opposite to the ones we are most identified with. In other words, they mirror our disowned selves, and we mirror theirs. — Shakti Gawain

We all look in the mirror and see us a little blonder or a little thinner or a little younger, whatever that ideal might be and most of the people that I'm photographing are selling something, you know whether they're on the front of an album cover or a magazine or they're a corporate person ready to switch companies or a doctor selling a skincare line ... so I want to help them achieve that. — Carol Friedman

When we find delight in another person, we've actually found something joyful inside ourselves that involves a shift in our awareness, a shift in our perception, because the same person is not necessarily attractive to other people.In relationship, whenever we're drawn to someone or repelled by someone, they're both mirrors of the self. We're attracted to people in whom we find traits that we want or desire in our own selves. And we are repelled by people in whom we find traits that we're denying in ourselves. So relationship is a true mirror of where we are in our evolution in consciousness. — Deepak Chopra

We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority
a small minority
for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Life is constantly teaching us that we are mirrors of one another and that no one is an island! — Auliq Ice

Books are like blankets, the mere sight of them around the house provides warmth and comfort. They are like mirrors, too, reflecting places I've been, phases I've been through, people I've loved or thought I did. — Mary Schmich

The people we are in relationships with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs. — Shakti Gawain

All relationships are your mirrors and all people are your teachers. — Barbara De Angelis

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

His (the Christian God) type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. There's not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, and they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we're all the better for that. — James Lovegrove

People ask me, 'Is being a parent the be-all, end-all?' And I say, 'Oh, it definitely is up to the person, and it is difficult, it can be very difficult, and it can be extremely healing.' That's what I have found, that the children are mirrors. Everyone is a mirror, but children especially because they're day and night and all day long. — Melissa Etheridge

The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore. The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide. This is exactly why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all, so we dare not avoid them, but for the young they have perhaps not yet taken place at any depth, so young people are always very fragile. — Richard Rohr

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable. — Robert Rauschenberg

Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies. — Mark Helprin

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that. — Margaret Atwood

Some people are quick to challenge others but refuse to look in the mirror and challenge themselves. — Behdad Sami

Other people are like a mirror which reflects back on us the kind of image we cast. — Fulton J. Sheen

Great question in science - questions like the ones Herschel raised about the structure of the universe - are seldom answered by ivory-tower types engaging in pure thought. They are answered by people who are willing to get down into the trenches and grapple with nature. If that means casting your own telescope mirrors, as Herschel did, so be it. — James Trefil