Quotes about Reflection

For verses and poems I can turn to true food.

But I am unwilling to utter all that may occur to those who think of it, yet cannot be spoken without irreverence.

It is Wisdom, Wisdom's self which gleameth through me; severing my cloudiness which yet again mantles over me, fainting from it, through the darkness which for my punishment gathers upon me.

My confession then, O my God, in Thy sight, is made silently, and not silently. For in sound, it is silent; in affection, it cries aloud.

O foolish man that I then was, enduring impatiently the lot of man! I fretted then, sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose it, I found not.

I lighted upon that bold woman, simple and knoweth nothing, shadowed out in Solomon, sitting at the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies willingly, and drink ye stolen waters which are sweet: she seduced me, because she found my soul dwelling abroad in the eye of my flesh, and ruminating on such food as through it I had devoured.

For, as I know that I am, so I know this also, that I know.

What is that which gleams through me, and strikes my heart without hurting it; and I shudder and kindle? I shudder, inasmuch as I am unlike it; I kindle, inasmuch as I am like it.

And that you are yet alive is due to God, who spares you that you may be admonished to repent and reform your lives.

And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.

I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. Im telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.

Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.