Quotes about Reflection
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
— Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
— Henry David Thoreau
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A
— Henry David Thoreau
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?
— Henry David Thoreau
Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading
— Henry David Thoreau
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
— Henry David Thoreau
We look to the Bible but not to get ideas from what people did for God. We look to see what God did in peoples' lives.
— Henry Blackaby
We sometimes hear people boast about their hurtful behavior: "I know I am outspoken and step on toes, but that's just the way I am!" Such people have never seriously considered the source of their offensive and divisive comments. If they did, they might be shocked to discover they were actually Satan's mouthpieces.
— Henry Blackaby
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
— Herman Melville
And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.
— Herman Melville
The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
— Herman Melville
I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality
— Herman Melville