Reflection Quotes

“When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one place and life to the next. We try to do the best we can. There are moments like this, however, when we are neither coming nor going, and all we have to do is sit and look back on the life we have made.”
― Dinaw Mengestu

“Your truest spiritual path will lead you to yourself for it is devoted to becoming.”
― Mollie Marti

“Not learning from past mistakes makes it ultimately impossible not to repeat them again.”
― Octavia Yvonne Webb, Mixed Bloodline: The story of a young biracial boy overcoming racism growing up in the South doing the 1930's Jim Crow Era

“has it ever occurred to you that where there is no anger, there is also no love?”
― Siobhan Dowd

“An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.”
― Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency

“His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“piensa que el hecho de que no existan luchas, odio ni deseos significa que tampoco existen las cosas opuestas. Es decir, la alegría, la paz de espíritu, el amor. Porque es de la desesperanza, del desengaño y de la tristeza de donde nace la alegría y, sin ellas, ésta no podría existir. Es imposible encontrar una paz de espíritu sin desesperación”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Many of the traditional approaches to interfaith dialogue have assumed that it can be successful only if agreements are reached about amorphous concepts and themes that various traditions may have in common. These approaches have also assumed that participants have to "weaken" or "compromise" elements of their own faith... this is not necessarily constructive for engaging in interfaith understanding and dialogue. It is only when participants have a deep understanding of their own religious traditions and are willing to learn and recognize the richness of other religious traditions that constructive cooperation can take place between groups from different faiths. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 57-58)”
― David R. Smock, Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding

“Ir à lua e voltar não é tão desafiador quanto retornar à terra e ter de lidar com a humanidade.”
― Buzz Aldrin

“Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully.”
― Isobelle Carmody, Greylands

“We are all beggars before the throne of destiny. But sometimes, destiny takes pity on us.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender in Exile

“Some times humanity lacks vision, most times understanding.”
― F.C. Quiles

“Attention is weightless.”
― Karan Kapoor

“A seed sprouts in silence.”
― Karan Kapoor

“And there he stands in front of me, like a hanging corpse, unaware of being dead.”
― George Peros, URBANIMALITY: Fragments

“Deafening sirens and blinding lights—night reigns over the city center, the same way melancholy does over me.”
― George Peros, URBANIMALITY: Fragments

“My legs, exhausted, follow me as I walk on the moist pavement; around me, few pedestrians, and above, the full moon—hanging alone like a forgotten ornament.”
― George Peros, URBANIMALITY: Fragments

“In the end, we all have to return to our homes. We have to embrace our past, no matter how bitter and dark it is.”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“25. — You are 25 — Reassessment
A point where you want to start anew, but don’t know how.
If you leave now: You won’t see how others suddenly become more important than yourself.”
― Oleg Dor

“36. — You are 36 — Compromise
You choose what to carry forward.
If you leave now: You won’t experience the moment your parents ask for help — and you manage.”
― Oleg Dor, Life from 0 to 100: One Year – One Sentence

“Read slowly. Listen closely. Because somewhere between the pages of life, you may hear your Big Voice Within.”
― Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma, Big Voice Within

“The year arrived without ceremony and left without permission. It did not explain itself, nor did it wait for me to understand it. Days blurred into one another, each carrying a different weight, and I learned that time does not heal—it observes. I moved through the months as if through narrow corridors, constantly shrinking parts of myself so I could fit. Every decision felt provisional, every emotion unfinished, as though my life was being written in a language I could almost read but never speak fluently.

Hope stayed with me, but not as comfort. It became something demanding, something that asked for proof every day. Love was no longer gentle; it turned into labor, into patience stretched thin, into waiting without knowing what I was waiting for. I discovered that missing someone can be louder than their presence, and that silence can say more than any confession. I learned how easily the heart negotiates against itself, how it convinces the mind to accept less just to avoid emptiness.

There were moments when I felt transparent, as if the world could see through me and find nothing worth holding. I performed normality convincingly—smiles, routines, plans—while inside everything remained unresolved. I carried conversations that never happened, apologies that were never asked for, futures that were discussed and then quietly buried. Each night ended with the same question, not spoken aloud: how much of myself can I lose and still be called myself?

This year taught me that strength is rarely heroic. It is waking up with the same ache and choosing not to collapse under it. It is staying when leaving would be easier, and leaving when staying would destroy you slowly. I became familiar with fear—not the dramatic kind, but the persistent one that lives in the chest and whispers doubt into every hope. I learned that certainty is a luxury, and most of life is lived on fragile assumptions.

By the end of it, I am not wiser, only altered. I stand here carrying fewer illusions and more questions. The year took what it wanted and left me changed, unfinished, and still breathing. If there is meaning in this survival, it is not yet clear to me. All I know is that I endured, quietly and imperfectly, and that in itself has become the only undeniable truth I can claim.”
― Chris Robbie

“Grief for futures you won’t see is the price of loving something bigger than yourself.”
― Achaius Estalius

“We do not become who we are through sudden decisions, but through what we repeatedly observe, accept, and carry.”
― Fernando J. M. Lopes

“As long as I'm alive and able, I won't stop talking about humanity and all of its fears.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“No vamos a recriminarle a un animal que tenga instinto, ¿no?”
― Violaine Bérot, Como bestias

“Some of the county's abandoned landmarks are places of somber and poignant reflection.”
― Nathan Fearn, Abandoned Derbyshire

“Some endings do not remove weight; they simply redistribute it.”
― Adedotun Agbojo, The True Cost of Divorce: Generational Impact and Lasting Solutions

“nobody should be forced to be someone they’re not”
― Reese Wheeler, The Destiny Meets