Quotes about Reflection

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that... The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.

The Church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it.

If a man is known by the company he keeps, so also his character is reflected in the books he reads.

I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.

Why has he taken this job?... For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

We are all sorry when we are discovered. Then we are very sorry.It's not the question if we're sorry. The question is did we draw a lesson? The question is: what are we going to do now, when we're sorry?

Does it surprise you as much as it does me, this correspondence between things as they are and the pictures we have of them in our minds?

In my own terms, I am being punished for what happened... I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?

You will believe me when I say the life we lead grows less and less distinct from the life we led of Cruso's island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.