Thoughtful Reflection Quotes & Sayings

Though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in great measure correct it by reflection and philosophy; and some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where, even to the most fortunate, the chances are greatly against happiness. — Lord Chesterfield

The sun is but a morning star. — Henry David Thoreau

A writer needs solitude : moments that he can spend in introspection and in reflection. These moments make him pensive and thoughtful and help him write his thoughts with clarity. A life of devotion to one's passion gives us meaning to our life. — Avijeet Das

Thoughts are the shorebirds scurrying back and forth just beyond the edge of oncoming wave. — Tom Gillaspy

What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered. — Isaac Asimov

Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty. — Mario Cuomo

The act of taking my own life is not something that I do without a lot of thought. I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and to a place where there is no self, only calm. Love always, Wendy. — Wendy O. Williams

The velocity and knee-jerk response to events happening in real time that television brings us precludes any kind of reflection or contemplation and therefore analysis. And that's been one of the greatest political dangers in the post-war era. The idea of the reasoned, thoughtful response goes out of the window. — Bill Viola

Confidence comes from thoughtful action, reflection, and experience. Confidence does not come from reaction. — Debasish Mridha

You have long since known that safe is a film skin thing — Klara Piechocki

Is Wisdom derived from the accumulation of one's experiences, or rather one's thoughtful reflection upon what he has learned throughout the process? — Christopher Earle

The heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its swings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of love often realize they are being kind. — Mark Nepo

Religion becomes a hollow shell of its former self when ritual remains and thoughtful reflection disappears. — Nouman Ali Khan

Dreams are a luxury of the human condition. — Tom Althouse

The house in the story is based on my friend Tori's house in Kinsale, Ireland, which is obviously not actually haunted, and the sound of people upstairs moving wardrobes around when you are downstairs there and alone is probably just something that old houses do when they think they are unobserved. — Neil Gaiman

As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom. — Gregory Benford

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come — Leonardo Da Vinci

I use the term "piety" in Calvin's sense as "that reverence joined with the love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces."10 One of the reasons for using "piety," especially when understood in Calvinian terms, is that such an idea invokes a concern of trusting thoughtful reflection and grateful action. — Paul R. Schaefer Jr.

My hope is that whatever it is you decide to believe about whatever subject, you have thought through carefully each of those beliefs and at least tried to make sure that they are your beliefs and not those of your parents. It matters less to me what your specific beliefs are than that you have carefully arrived at your beliefs through reason and evidence and thoughtful reflection. — Michael Shermer

She was a lover and a lewd cohabitator, a liar and a cherished friend, an aunt and a kindly grandmother, a champion of the fallen, and a late-in-coming fighter for reason over fear. Even in those final hours, quite and rocking, arriving and departing, she knew who she was. — Laura Moriarty

But sometimes you can spend a lot of sorrow trying to change things for the better, when what was first was best. Its only you were too foolish to realize it. — Marisa Silver

It's strange how money seems to silence a neighborhood," I say quietly. "On my street, where no one has money, it's so loud. Sirens blaring, people shouting, car doors slamming, stereos thumping. There's always someone, somewhere, making noise. — Colleen Hoover

Living is a creative and active process of diligent learning that entails industrious human action, attentive awareness, and thoughtful reflection. Learning is one facet of human beings innate capacity that can provide a sense of worthiness to human life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Go a little easy on the people around you. Try to reel in judging thoughts. Think before you speak. — John Manning

You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be as a fugitive. First question of conscience.

Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.

Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.

Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is by thoughtful reflection that the elusive moments of the past draw near to us in present reality and gain a measure of permanence. — Yi-Fu Tuan

As you awake from dreams may you find this one the wondrous one to awaken to. — Tom Althouse

I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. (suicide note) — Wendy O. Williams

The shoreline of my thoughts disappeared as I drifted upon an open ocean of reflection. — Mike Ericksen

Unless you are silent, you will not
know your urgent heart, how it beats
between the thin skin of yes and no. — Drew Myron

Keep your heart and mind open, Taylor. Don't make any rash decisions that you might regret later on. Sometimes things in life aren't as clear as we would like them to be, especially in the beginning. When the time is right, you'll know it. Just don't burn the bridge before you ever get the chance to cross it. — Rose Wynters

He was Antinous, wild. You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already, in some preceding existence, been through the revolutionary apocalypse. He knew its tradition like an eyewitness. He knew every little detail of that great thing.
A pontifical and warrior nature, strange in a youth. He was officiating and militant; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of democracy; above the movement of the time, a priest of the ideal. — Victor Hugo

She wanted to reach up to the night and dig her fingers into it, beg it to stay just a little bit longer. — Adi Alsaid

Even those novelists most commonly deemed "philosophical" have sometimes answered with an emphatic no. Iris Murdoch, the longtime Oxford philosopher and author of some two dozen novels treating highbrow themes like consciousness and morality, argued that philosophy and literature were contrary pursuits. Philosophy calls on the analytical mind to solve conceptual problems in an "austere, unselfish, candid" prose, she said in a BBC interview broadcast in 1978, while literature looks to the imagination to show us something "mysterious, ambiguous, particular" about the world. Any appearance of philosophical ideas in her own novels was an inconsequential reflection of what she happened to know. "If I knew about sailing ships I would put in sailing ships," she said. "And in a way, as a novelist, I would rather know about sailing ships than about philosophy. — Iris Murdoch