Reflection quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"I don't really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. For example, if people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me."
"The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes."
"Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds."
"Everything that happens to us is a reflection of who we are."
"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside reflection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you."
"Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret."
"Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection."
"Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us."
"The love you feel in life is a reflection of the love you feel in yourself."
"Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man."
"Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit."
"No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already."
"Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection."
"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far."
"Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching – a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless. And in the almostness of the moment, I cared at least enough. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try to find out. Her on my bed, wide green eyes staring down at me. The enduring mystery of her sly, almost smirking, smile. Five layers between us."
"To me that's a reflection of love, when someone can see you enjoying yourself, and want to participate, or want to encourage, or want to help you to do something that you enjoy."
"It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?"
"Show respect to people who don't deserve it. Not as a reflection of their character, but of yours."
"Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you."
"My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease."
"When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen."
"Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding."
"If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are."
"To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is."
