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Reflection Quotes
"Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."
2
"Understanding leads to acceptance."
2
"To see the farm is to leave it."
2
"You know, I went out on a normal amount of dates in my early 20s, and I got absolutely slaughtered for it. And it took a lot of hard work and altering my decision-making. I didn't date for two and a half years. Should I have had to do that? No."
2
"Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present one lacks."
2
"Whatever problem you have can be solved through solitude."
2
"Echoes of my past will always have a low frequency vibration in my present lest I forget the road travelled to reach the enjoyment of today."
2
"I realize that I don't know where to start. Not because I'm unsure of my story, but because I'm not sure why I feel compelled to tell it in the first place. What can be achieved by unearthing the past?"
2
"He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation. He didn't care if he never made the train and if it had not been for what suddenly caught his attention, like a cry out of the gathering dusk, he might have forgotten there was a station to go to."
2
"Woman is woman."
2
"And a man without memories is just a shell."
2
"Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death."
2
"We ourselves, will resurrect the memory in order to savor it and carry it forth into the world. We will fling it at one another for laughs. Distort it. We will toss the story into the air at parties and howl over its ripeness. Degraded as it was, we will degrade it further. Make it more swollen. We shall render it impossibly awful, making of it the mythology of ourselves. A comfort. Proof of the trials we've survived."
2
"Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her."
2
"I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"
2
"We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor."
2
"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."
2
"When our mind is in shambles and we dare to reflect on the story of our life, we may discover, in the stream of our thoughts, the fault line between what we have underfelt and what we have overthought on our way. ['Axel Red']"
2
"When you've got everything and think you've got nothing you've actually got less."
2
"For a short time, your beauty is an important matter. It the long run, what is important is what you are."
2
"Femelu could not understand this, her mother's ability to tell herself stories about her reality that did not even resemble her reality."
2
"If you hate me, you only harm yourself."
2
"And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be."
2
"She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it."
2
"We have so much to learn from a fallen teardrop which is wiped away from our cheek never to be felt again."
2
"What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?"
2
"People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed."
2
"This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."
2
"Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything."
2
"We must account for the life that we lived. A person inevitably will ask himself or herself on their deathbed, 'what was the aim of my life,' 'what did I accomplish,' 'what did I not accomplish,' 'what would I alter if I could live my life all over again'? What we discover on our deathbeds is that material luxuries afford no solace. We cannot purchase, possess, or legally acquire what is pure: love, beauty, truth, goodness, and imagination."
2
"We tell our secrets to the dark."
2
"What would you do if you only had one day left in this world? Spend it with the people you love? Travel to the far corners of the earth to see as many wonders as possible? Eat nothing but chocolate? Would you apologize for all your mistakes? Would you stand up to those you'd never had the courage to face? Would you tell your secret crush that you loved him or her? Why is it that we wait till the last minute to do the things we should be doing all along?"
2
"It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be called-- were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should-- I am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"--he nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."
2
"The memory of the past did not redeem the future, as he insisted on believing."
2
"From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me."
2
"What if, tomorrow is your last day on earth? Think!"
2
"But more words tumble out. 'You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.'Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry."
2
"How did you become blind, uh, Jeff is it?"Yeah, Jeff. Well, I looked directly at the sun, you know, the way they always tell you not to. If only I had listened."
2
"There was a time when I do not understand poetry."
2
"He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death."
2
"A truth should exist,it should not be usedlike this. If I love youis that a fact or a weapon?"
2
"His head was pounding and his vision skewed in some way and he was vaguely amazed at being alive and not sure that it was worth it."
2
"The architect and the father of war are covetousness of the leaders and of different interest groups fueling war."
2
"My mother used to say that sometimes if you turn a tragedy over in your hand, you can see a miracle running through it, like fool's gold in the hardest shard of rock."
2
"Your mind is your master."
2
"The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed."
2
"More than half of my life is past, I have left only the time I need for turning the rest of it to account and for effacing my errors by my virtues."
2
"Isn't it strange how people are selective about the truth the want to see or hear?"
2
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