Quotessence
Home / Topics / Reflection Quotes

Reflection Quotes

Browse 3084 quotes about Reflection.

Related topics

Reflection Quotes

“There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.”

“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane ofthe grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”

“I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.”

“I try to influence this improvisation in two ways. One is by centering on reflections, in both senses of the word: acoustic reflections as well as visual reflections from a mirror or surface, and then reflecting on the material in a contemplative way. The other influence is listening to the tails of the sounds that you make.”

“Love is a passion for life shared with another person. You fall in love with a person who you think is wonderful. It's your deepest appreciation of the value of that individual, and that individual is a reflection of what you value most in life. Love, for sound reasons, can be one of life's greatest rewards.”

“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.”

“Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound and walking around the sidewalks, like when you're a kid, and kicking those soft piles, and seeing smoke from backyards and Mr. Kilstrap standing over the metal drum with the holes in the top, the sparking embers at his feet.”

“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.”