Quotes about Reflection

Anyone who listens to the world, anyone who seeks the sacred in the ordinary events of life, has "problems about how to believe.

Cities remind us that the desire to escape from the problems of other people by fleeing to a suburb, small town, or a monastery, for that matter, is an unholy thing, and ultimately self-defeating. We can no more escape from other people than we can escape from ourselves.

Like an exasperating but invaluable friend, the Bible keeps bringing me back to my senses, often in bracing (and comical) ways.

Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others.

Others find it easy to dismiss the Bible out of hand, as negative, vengeful, violent. I can only hope that they are rejecting the violence-as-entertainment of movies and television on the same grounds, and that they say a prayer every time they pick up a daily newspaper or turn on CNN. In the context of real life, the Bible seems refreshingly whole, an honest reflection on humanity in relation to the sacred and the profane.

In many ways, airplane travel mimics the asceticism of the early desert monks: a limited and uncomfortable physical space in which to sit, limited availability of water, food that is less than appetizing, small chance of getting much sleep.

Interpretation is not necessarily a separate step from observation, for often, as you carefully observe the text, at that very moment you begin to see what it means. Thus, interpretation flows out of observation.

A man who truly knows himself realizes his own worthlessness, and takes no pleasure in the praises of men.

As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.