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Reflection Quotes
"I never, even for a moment, doubted what they'd told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt's complete absence. They have forgotten."
15
"There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin, till time and error and accident were undone, and the world became comprehensible and whole."
15
"There comes a time in one's life, perhaps in middle age, when we stop and assess who we are, and the life we have."
15
"Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody."
15
"We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal."
15
"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature."
15
"The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows."
15
"When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ?Do you huddle close together because you love each other? What will you answer? "We all dwell togetherTo make money from each other? or "This is a community? Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."
15
"And I dreamed of a home long ago in New England, my little kitkats trying to go a thousand miles following me on the road across America, and my mother with a pack on her back, and my father running after the ephemeral uncatchable train, and I dreamed and woke up to a gray dawn, saw it, sniffed (because I had seen all the horizon shift as if a sceneshifter had hurried to put it back in place and make me believe in its reality), and went back to sleep, turning over. "It's all the same thing," I heard my voice say in the void that's highly embraceable during sleep."
15
"Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the rose garden. My words echothus, in your mind."
15
"We can learn from IBM's successful history that you don't have to have the best product to become number one. You don't even have to have a good product."
15
"Our life stories are largely constructed and without mindfulness can prove destructive."
15
"If your outer world is shaky, go within."
15
"When I was younger, I was a robot. Wind her up and she plays tennis."
15
"I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus?"
15
"Reflecting on various aspects of our lives is essential for a person to grow and adjust to changing phases in their life. Self-analysis entails examining a person's existing level of self-esteem and documenting the inner voice that speaks to a person, which is frequently either affirming of self-defeating. Failure to periodically engage in self-analysis, make crucial revisions in our personas, and modify our thinking patterns when we encounter transformative events in life can lead to mood disorders, burnout, and other emotional maladies."
15
"I was with book, as a woman is with child."
14
"There's no way New Orleans will ever be the city it was. I think it will have half the population. They may create a sort of Disneyland at the French Quarter for tourists. The rest I don't know."
14
"The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution."
14
"What the culture of get rich quick does to our people is Our young people look for quick answers and solutions."
14
"There'll be a special place in hell for the tape back-up people."
14
"No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight."
14
"Another factor that seems to me to be equally important is the great myth and rationale of 'the modern,' that it places dynamite at the foot of old error and levels its shrines and monuments. Contempt for the past surely accounts for a consistent failure to consult it."
14
"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."
14
"And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content."
14
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
14
"This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence."
14
"Deliberately and purposefully schedule meetings with yourself. These are the most important meetings in the life of one who intends to make their success deliberate. During these meeting you do much of the quality and honest communication with yourself. This is besides the conversations you are always carrying on with yourself in your own head or audibly. That doesn't mean you are crazy, we all do it and we just need to improve the quality and positivity of those conversations."
14
"Do you not hear the constant victory,in the human footraceof time, slow as fire,sure, and thick and Herculeanaccumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?"
14
"He recognised that all the period of Odette's life which had elapsed before she first met him, a period of which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind, was not the featureless abstraction which he could vaguely see, but had consisted of so many definite, dated years, each crowded with concrete incidents. But were he to learn more of them, he feared lest her past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering."
14
"Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down."
14
"People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant."
14
"How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?"
14
"Some people look as if they have lost their eagerness and passion. Their aspiration seems to be exhausted and fresh inspiration has abandoned their weary mind. Life has boundlessly given them material welfare, which has fully spoiled them in the end. No energy for longing has been left, as they have reached a twilight zone. The twilight of desire. ['Twilight of desire']"
14
"We might do well to take a look at what we've crammed into our pockets as it will say much about what we've crammed into our hearts."
14
"It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast."
14
"How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light."
14
"India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don't think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone."
13
"When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not."
13
"Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either."
13
"If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked."
13
"Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need."
13
"The year 1826 was remarkable for the commencement of one of those fearful droughts to which we have reason to believe the climate of New South Wales is periodically subject."
13
"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate."
13
"Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights."
13
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."
13
"This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations."
13
"The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true."
13
"The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes."
13
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