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Reflection Quotes

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Reflection Quotes

“If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.”

IfsMeanChristianLastsNamesIndividualSilenceKnownDoubtCenturySecurityOffersFameJudgmentReflectionFunctionRelationOneselfLimitationPlanesImmortalityMeaning Of LifeSignificancePyramidsChristian FaithDoubtfulEgyptianInstabilityIndividual LifeJudgment Of OthersEgyptian Pyramids
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.”

PeopleKnowsSometimesFacesUsedFearWaterSilenceClearReflectionShadowDepthCastsObstaclesStaringStreamsDreadObscureTransparentClear Water
Book:Scented gardens for the blind: a novel
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“Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away from the noise and tension of modern life, at least for a little while, in order to relax their minds and wills and seek a blessed healing sense of inner unity, reconciliation, integration?”

WantNeedsMindHumansLittlesOrderHealingSilenceModernReflectionBlessedMovedUnitySeekingNoiseTensionRelaxGet AwayIntegrationReconciliationModern LifeHuman Needs
Book:Love and Living
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“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.”

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Author:Paulo Freire
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“In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth... Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected... For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of 'eco-system' that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.”

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Author:Pope Benedict XVI
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“We usually recognize a beginning. Endings are more difficult to detect. Most often, they are realized only after reflection. Silence. We are seldom conscious when silence begins—it is only afterward that we realize what we have been a part of. In the night journeys of Canada geese, it is the silence that propels them. Thomas Merton writes, “Silence is the strength of our interior life.… If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.”

IfsWritingHas BeensNightDifficultRealizingSilenceOur LivesJourneyReflectionConsciousCanadaInteriorsSilence IsGeese
Book:Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
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“Silence is not the absence of sound but an environment that amplifies what we usually ignore. When the external noise fades, the whispers inside grow louder. We might hear anxieties we’ve been avoiding, desires we haven’t acknowledged, or sorrow we thought we had neatly tucked away. Silence holds up a mirror, reflecting our inner world back at us without distortion”

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Author:Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"
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“Personal ignorance and shallow thoughts led me to misconstrue reality. Instead of taking an occasional respite from meeting work related deadlines and reflecting upon the growth of the inner self, all my personal energy was devoted to efficiently performing daily tasks, responding to the never-ending heave of the external world of busyness. Busy people tabulate the value of their life of work by what they achieved, which can prove meritorious. We can also hide from ourselves by never devoting select intervals of quietness for self-reflection. We need periods of silence and contemplation in order to nurture our spiritual development.”

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Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Once, in grade school, our class was taken on an overnight excursion to a campground. The air was warm: we had a campfire and ate hot dogs; and as darkness fell, we were herded down to the lake. There were perhaps thirty children, so I suppose there were at least four or five adults. We trooped through the woods with flashlights. There must have been yelling and singing, the grown-ups chattering. A noisy expedition. At the shore of the lake we were presented, as if on a stage, with a doubled moon -- one floating in the clear dark sky, one in the clear dark calm of the water. Were there exclamations, shouts of amazement, loud giggle praise for this sight? There might have been, but for me there was only silence. An unprecedented silence, tranquil and immense. Silence, and the moon on the lake -- a sight so pure I nearly staggered under its impact. I knew, without the words to say it, that the lack in my life of what this moon and lake represented was the other side of the coin of happiness. Not unhappiness, but shame, which was possibly the same thing, and which then rose up in me in nauseating waves.”

HappinessSoundSilenceMoonReflectionShameOpposition
Author:Norma Fox Mazer
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“In an age that valued prolonged and detailed exposition, complexity, and repetition it was astonishing that Luther should have instinctively discerned the value of brevity.”

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Book:Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation
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