Quotes about Reflection

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.

That all is as thinking makes it so — and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.

Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.

Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.

Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered

Think not so much of what you lack as of what you have: but of the things that you have, select the best, and then reflect on how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.

Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth.

Don't be overheard complaining ... not even to yourself.