Quotes about Reflection

The thoughts that linger are the "If only" questions, like Who could I have become if I had finally done the things I always wanted to do? The gift of deciding to face your mortality without turning away or flinching is the gift of recognizing that because you WILL die, you must live NOW. Whether you flounder or flourish is always in your hands. You are the single biggest influence in your life. Your journey begins with the choice to get up, step out, and live. Fully.

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.

Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.