Reflections On Life Quotes & Sayings

We all would like to think that there are clear boundaries that separate truth from lies and reality from fantasy. I used to think that but I don't anymore. I've found that those boundaries can be vague, obscure, and frequently changing. — Dana Caldarone

A man, engaged in his simple reflections in everyday life, will comprehend neither the possibility, nor the benefits of self-sacrifice, but, when given ("qu'on lui donne", Fr.) a great cause to defend, and he will find only natural to sacrifice oneself for it. — African Spir

I ain't never saw a hearse with a luggage rack." (Quote by George Strait, country singer, and appearing at the end of Bob Mitchell's memoir, Time for a Heart-to-Heart: Reflections on Life in the Face of Death. — George Strait

Telling our personal story constitutes an act of consciousness that defines the ethical lining of a person's constitution. Recounting personal stories promotes personal growth, spurs the performance of selfless deeds, and in doing so enhances the ability of the equitable eye of humanity to scroll rearward and forward. Every person must become familiar with our communal history of struggle, loss, redemption, and meaningfully contemplate the meaning behind our personal existence in order to draft a proper and prosperous future for succeeding generations. Accordingly, every person is responsible for sharing their story using the language of thought that best expresses their sanguine reminiscences. Without a record of pastimes, we will never know what were, what we now are, or what we might become by steadfastly and honorably struggling with mortal chores. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Don't laugh, it's people like her who make this lousy
world a place worth visiting.'
'Whores?'
'No. We're all whores, sooner or later. I mean
good-hearted people. And don't look at me like that. Weddings turn me to jelly.'
We remained there embracing that special silence, gazing at the reflections on the water. After a while dawn tinged the sky with amber, and Barcelona woke up. We heard the distant bells from the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, just emerging from the mist on the other side of the harbour.
'Do you think Carax is still there, somewhere in the
city?' I asked.
'Ask me another question.'
'Do you have the rings?'
Fermin smiled. 'Come on, let's go. They're waiting for us, Daniel. Life is waiting for us. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections. — Margaret Mead

People create all kind of fancy watches and clocks, never stopping to realize they're building monuments to the greatest of all thieves. — K. Martin Beckner

I want to
peel away all the labels
I had once given to others
and place them
upon the fabric
of my own identity.

They have reflected back to me,
everything that I refuse
to See in myself. — Meraaqi

The difference between darkness and brightness is how you thrive on those moments and how you use such circumstances with goodwill in your spirit. — Angelica Hopes

What gives us word-users the right to make life-and-death decisions concerning other living creatures that have no words? Why do we find ourselves in positions of such anguish (at least for some of us)? In the final analysis, it is simply because might makes right, and we humans, thanks to the intelligence afforded us by the complexity of our brains and our embeddedness in rich languages and cultures, are indeed high and mighty, relative to the "lower" animals (and vegetables). By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses. Are cows just as comfortably killable as mosquitoes? Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block? — Douglas R. Hofstadter

Life is an endless attempt to word the unwordable, to make what cannot be touched walk on the ground, to embody what can never be fit inside a single lifetime.
We see reflections of ourselves in sunrises, hear our perfection in thunderstorms and babies' laughter--touch, taste and feel--and then try to somehow remember all of that while taking out the trash, paying bills and a million other ways we have invented to forget.
We weave together within ourselves mud and spirit, shadow and light, animal and angel.
No wonder humans feel crazy most of the time.

But you aren't crazy. You are doing a heroic thing by being here as yourself. — Jacob Nordby

Apparently, before we are born, each of us experiences a vision of what our life can be, complete with reflections on our parents and our tendencies to engage in particular control dramas, even how we might work through these dramas with these parents and go on to be prepared for what we want to accomplish. — James Redfield

For the first time (but how long will it take us to acknowledge this?) in the history of ideas, a philosopher had dedicated a whole book to the question of atheism. He professed it, demonstrated it, arguing and quoting, sharing his reading and his reflections, and seeking confirmation from his own observations of the everyday world. His title sets it out clearly: Memoir of the Thoughts and Feelings of Jean Meslier; and so does his subtitle: Clear and Evident Demonstrations of the Vanity and Falsity of All the Religions of the World. The book appeared in 1729, after his death. Meslier had spent the greater part of his life working on it. The history of true atheism had begun. — Michel Onfray

If you reflect on death, you find the vanity of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Early in life, when I first saw waterlilies on the ripples of a lake, I didn't think they were flowers which grew from the water, but rather flowers which were mirrored from the shore into the lake. So many flowers grow in the silent waters of our souls, and they unfold their petals over the glaze of our consciousness: they grow from within us, but we think them reflections from the external world. — Lucian Blaga

Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life and it gets death: it wants Truth and it has to settle for an education; it craves love and gets only intermittent euphoria's with satieties. Samples, reflections and fractions are only tastes, not mouthfuls. A divine trick has been played on the human heart as if a violin teacher gave his pupil an instrument with one string missing. God kept a part of man's heart in Heaven, so that discontent would drive him back again to Him Who is Eternal Life, All-Knowing Truth and the Abiding Ecstasy of Love. — Fulton J. Sheen

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

T was in a blue mood , his open reflections on the isloation of his life floating like Jazz notes under a pink moon — Saira Viola

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

A comparably capacious embrace of beauty and pleasure - an embrace that somehow extends to death as well as life, to dissolution as well as creation - characterizes Montaigne's restless reflections on matter in motion, Cervantes's chronicle of his mad knight, Michelangelo's depiction of flayed skin, Leonardo's sketches of whirlpools, Caravaggio's loving attention to the dirty soles of Christ's feet. — Stephen Greenblatt

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality?
not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still ... All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass ... There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning. — George MacDonald

For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each objects and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life. — Philip Kapleau

Effective, true deep listening and honest dialogue is a gift a soul can choose to give. How easy or difficult that can be depends on the values you hold in your life. — Angelica Hopes

If we are like God, we can only be God. Is that what you mean?"

"Oh, I think it is more than that. A robin is like a hawk, but it is also different. The Goddess Mother created us as reflections of herself. God to me is the Great Mother. God to me is the Old One. But it does not really matter; God is God. Life force is life force. God is the creator, the Great Spirit that permeates all of us. Once you truly understand that, Catherine, you realize that we are all part of one another, that we are in agreement on this wonderful, green earth, and that we live in a state of duality, a state of separateness that is not real. We are separated by an agreement called space and time. — Lynn V. Andrews

This book is not the memoir of a contented man. It's not the poignant reflections of a white-haired guru who has finally figured out the secret to contentment. It's more like sweaty, bloody, hastily scribbled notes from a battlefield. I'm still struggling to escape the sinister fingers on this conspiracy. I'm still waging war against the discontentment that rages in my life. I can see contentment in the distance, like a hazy oasis, but I have to pick my way through a minefield to get there. I'm not the contented man God wants me to be, but I'm fighting to get there. I'm writing this book the hope that you'll join me in the fight. — Stephen Altrogge

It is within the boundaries of reflection we are able to become aware of insights that can lead us to understanding. — Kat Lahr

And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to espress (sic) myself" - I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same she was a geological (sic) relation; there is always the respect due to your geology (sic)," I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Francoise, the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life. — Marcel Proust

The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide. Take the following examples: a man without faith seeking to find in science a substitute for his faith on which to build his life; a man unsatisfied by philosophy seeking an all-embracing universal truth in science; a spiritually shallow person growing aware of his own futility in the course of engaging in the endless reflections imposed by science. In every one of these cases, science begins as an object of blind idolatry and ends up as an object of hatred and
contempt. Disenchantment inevitably follows upon these and similar misconceptions. One question remains: What value can science possibly have when its limitations have become so painfully clear? — Karl Jaspers

Sometimes, after shedding all the loads with the view of making your heavy and sinking boat lighter so that you can sail and move on with the journey of purposeful life, you realize that there is one more thing to offload: disobedience, and there is one more thing to load: absolute faith! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life. The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon: the mind must be full of light. — Hong Zicheng

Between Two Harbors, Reflections of a Catalina Island Harbormaster, tells of my involvement in the death of Natalie Wood, to the many unique and interesting details of life on Catalina Island. — Doug Oudin

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION - side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages. — Katie Kacvinsky

My brunette with the golden eyes, your ivory body, your amber
Has left bright reflections in the room
Above the garden.
The clear midnight sky, under my closed lids,
Still shines ... I am drunk from so many roses
Redder than wine.
Leaving their garden, the roses have followed me ...
I drink their brief breath, I breathe their life.
All of them are here.
It's a miracle ... The stars have risen,
Hastily, across the wide windows
Where the melted gold pours.
Now, among the roses and the stars,
You, here in my room, loosening your robe,
And your nakedness glistens
Your unspeakable gaze rests on my eyes ...
Without stars and without flowers, I dream the impossible
In the cold night. — Renee Vivien

Children are the greatest philosophers : the questions that children ask require the deepest of thoughts and the longest of reflections on life! — Avijeet Das

I look around the room and can't help but think about how it is the little things we look back on in life. I wonder how often people think that they should pay more attention to them. — Erika Lance

I feel I have walked onto a stage. The people around me are absorbed in their parts, putting on this great show, but nothing seems real. Every object looks like a prop. Since I have no part I am reduced to the role of a spectator, but there is nowhere to sit, so I have to mingle with the actors on stage. It is a terrible feeling. — Ma Jian

You are like that spark of fire, that fell on a leaf and burnt the whole tree down gradually. Look at me now, all you can see is the memories and reflections of a tree that stood tall and strong once before. But I will not let you win. I will show you, how life can rise again from just ashes and dust. — Akshay Vasu

I sail through life with great trust in my heart. Whoever stains and breaks that trust will be in a cold water best left behind.
I felt the cold breeze of monetary means through the low ethics of money driven minds.
I securely docked in a shore I call home without the cloaks of dead winter I saw on people who have used me. — Angelica Hopes

Dear Evy, it's not a question of surviving. It's a question of dying slowly, so things have time to change. — Tina Lindegaard