Thoughtful Reflection Quotes

“When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be as a fugitive. First question of conscience.

Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.

Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.

Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“I think sometimes, being silent and watching, can change a person.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“The shoreline of my thoughts disappeared as I drifted upon an open ocean of reflection.”
― Mike Ericksen, Upon Destiny's Song

“That's magic I admire, using something that exists anyway and turning it round into a curse.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“He looked at the road quite a lot now. Sometimes the white line was solid, sometimes it was broken, and sometimes it was double like streetcar tracks. He wondered how people could ride over this road all the other days of the year and not see the pattern of life and death in that white paint. Or did they see, after all?”
― Stephen King, The Long Walk

“Go a little easy on the people around you. Try to reel in judging thoughts. Think before you speak.”
― John Manning, The Disciplined Leader: Keeping the Focus on What Really Matters

“The sun is but a morning star.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings: Civil Disobedience; Slavery in Massachusetts; A Plea for Captain John Brown; Life Without Principle

“[T]hey reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham...now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation into which death had never entered.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“He looked at the road white a lot now. Sometimes the white line was solid, sometimes it was broken, and sometimes it was double like streetcar tracks. He wondered how people could ride over this road all the other days of the year and not see the pattern of life and death in that white paint. Or did they see, after all?”
― Stephen King, The Long Walk

“Léonine had long been filling the garden with her presence, as if she had brought the Mediterranean to the little vegetable garden of the cemetery in which she was buried. That day, I knew that she was within each little miracle the soil produced.”
― Valérie Perrin

“Dreams are a luxury of the human condition.”
― Tom Althouse

“Thoughts are the shorebirds scurrying back and forth just beyond the edge of oncoming wave.”
― Tom Gillaspy, Fly Like An Eagle

“But sometimes you can spend a lot of sorrow trying to change things for the better, when what was first was best. Its only you were too foolish to realize it.”
― Marisa Silver, Little Nothing

“People were messy. They were defined not only by what they’d done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo.”
― V.E. Schwab, Our Dark Duet

“When one is alone at night in the depths of these woods, the stillness is at once awful and sublime. Every leaf seems to speak.”
― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“Time is a songbird, and just like any other songbird, it can be taken captive.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be as a fugitive. First question of conscience.

Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.

Twilight of the idols

Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.

Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“You have long since known that safe is a film skin thing”
― Klara Piechocki

“The heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its swings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of love often realize they are being kind.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“La no satisfacción de los deseos y la firme y eterna creencia de que cada acto destinado a satisfacerlos deja mucho que desear y es mejorable son el eje del motor de la economía orientada al consumidor.

La sociedad de consumo consigue hacer permanente esa insatisfacción. Una de las formas que tiene de lograr tal efecto es denigrando y devaluando los productos de consumo poco después de que hayan sido promocionados a bombo y platillo en el universo de los deseos del consumidor. Pero hay otra vía (más eficaz todavía) oculta de la atención pública: el método de satisfacer cada necesidad/deseo/carencia de manera que solo pueda dar pie a nuevas necesidades/deseos/carencias. Lo que empieza como una necesidad debe convertirse en una compulsión o en una adicción. Y en eso se acaba transformando, gracias a que el impulso de buscar en los comercios (y solo en los comercios) soluciones a los problemas y alivio para el dolor y la ansiedad es un aspecto de la conducta cuya materialización en hábito no solo está permitida, sino que es activa y vehementemente alentada.”
― Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life

“3D thoughts cannot be limited to 2D words, however, words can be aligned to inspire thought.”
― Tim McCollum

“They will not even dare take a minute and stand in front of a mirror to examine their faces lest they suddenly realize how defeated, how duped they have been all these years. There is something about staring at ourselves in the mirror that makes us question our very existence, and whether we are the kind of people that we wanted to be, a question that so many people avoid confronting.”
― Louis Yako

“Was she the bird trying to batter its way free, or was she the care?”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“None of them were recent, but that was the nature of family stories. They had to be far enough in the past that they took on a mythic quality.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, Fire & Heist

“As a coach, several foundations are essential. One of the biggest is learning how to ask thoughtful questions. Questions help clients get unstuck, explore their options, figure out what they can control, and take meaningful action.”
― Darcy Luoma, Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success

“Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.”
― James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly.

“But you will come to value what you still have, and what you may have in the future.”
― Erin Hunter, Moth Flight's Vision

“We're all broken," Mor said. "In our own ways- in places no one might see”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin