mirror quotes

   So in the simple blessing of a rainbow, In the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror, I have seen visible, Death's artifact Like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.

- Dannie Abse
  'Pathology of Colours'.

Omnis mundi creatura Quasi liber et pictura Nobis est, et speculum. Each creature of the world Is as a book, a picture, And a mirror to us.

-Alan of Lille also known as  'Alanus de Insulis'
c.1170  De Incarnatione Christi (Rhythmus  Alter), l.1^3.

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror.

-John Lawrence Ashbery
  Title of book.

Le Dandy doit aspirer a'   e"  tre sublime, sans interruption. Il doit vivre et dormir devant un miroir. The dandymust aspiretobesublimeat all times.Hemust live and sleep in front of a mirror.

- Charles Baudelaire
  Mon coeur mis a'   nu, pt.5.

Remember, the prince is like a mirror exposed to the eyes of all his subjects who continually look to him as a pattern on which to model themselves, and who in consequence without much trouble discover his vices and virtues.

-CharlesV
  Instructions a'   Philippe II son Fils ( Advice To His Son, translated1788). Quoted in G R Elton Renaissance and Reformation,1300^1648 (2nd edn,1968), p.137.

Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Holy scripture is placed before the eyes of our mind like a mirror, so that we may view our inner face therein.

-Pope Gregory I known as  'the Great'
c.582  Moralia in Job, bk.2, ch.1, section1.

   Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

- Ben Jonson
  Every Man out of His Humour, Induction.

The painter who draws by practiceand judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without knowledge of the same.

-Leonardo daVinci
Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).

The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.

-Walter Lippmann
  Public Opinion, ch.23.

What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters'thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admire'  d themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest.

- Christopher Marlowe
  Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 5, sc.1.

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

- Henry Valentine Miller
  Black Spring,'Third or Fourth Day of Spring'.

Patriarchy's chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole.

- Kate (Katherine) ne  e Murray Millett
  Sexual Politics, ch.2,'Theory of Sexual Politics'.

   If Microsoft were a car it would have a large gas pedal and a small but workable brake. It would not have a rear- view mirror.

- Mike (Michael) Murray
  In Newsweek,11  Jul.

   Art is a game only if you playat it, a mirror that reflects from the inside out.

- Marge Piercy
  Stone, Paper, Knife,'Stone, Paper, Knife'.

No pleasing Intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each a mirror of the other. The suff'ring eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to Statues, Statues thick as trees, With here a Fountain, never to be play'd, And there a Summer-house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails thro'myrtle bow'rs There Gladiators fight, or die, in flow'rs Un-water'd see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus'dusty Urn.

- Alexander Pope
Epistles to Several Persons,'To Lord Burlington', l.115^25.

The purse is the mirror of the soul.

- Anna Quindlen
  In the NewYorkTimes,16 Dec.

The Falklands held a mirror up to our own islands, and it reflected, in brilliantly sharp focus, all our injured belittlement, our sense of being beleaguered, neglected and misunderstood.

-Jonathan Raban
  Coasting, ch.3.

In them one can see the spontaneousand often aestheticexpressionof a peoplereflected, not ina gilt- framed drawing room mirror, but in an honest glass held up to the face of a nation.

-Winthrop Rockefeller
  On an exhibition of American folk art at the US Embassy, London. In news summaries, 31 Jan.

   Photography was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions ofthe everydayness of lifeas a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.

- Edward Jean Steichen
Quoted in Dialogue, May1989.

Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society.

- Bruce Sterling
  NationalAcademy of Sciences ConvocationonTechnology and Education,Washington DC,10 May.

And moving through a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.2, l.46^8.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me', cried The Lady of Shalott.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.3, l.109^17.

If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, NoVanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'A WomanYoung and Old', part 2 'Before theWorld was Made', stanza1. Collected in TheWinding Stair and Other Poems (1933).