reflection quotes

Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection of your own minds.

- Mary Astell
  A Serious Proposal to the Ladies For the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest,'By a Lover of Her Sex', pt.1.

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.

-Constantinus
  Victory, author's note.

Well, it is a humiliating reflection, that the straightest road to a man's heart is through his palate.

- Fanny ne  e Willis Fern
  Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio, Second Series,'Hungry Husbands'. Often quoted as'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.'

I have covered boxing, promoted boxing, watched it, thought about it, and after long reflection I cannot find a single thing that isgood about it either from the point of view of participant or spectator.

- Noel Gallagher
Quoted in Edith Summerskill The Ignoble Art (1956).

It's probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

- Edward Hopper
On the mood and content of his paintings. Quoted in the Washington Post, 25  Jun1995.

These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.

-John Locke
  Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.2, pt.1, section 4.

I was here convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed.

- Lady Mary Wortley ne  e Pierrepoint Montagu
c.1716  In a Turkish bath in Sofia. Collected in Lord Wharncliffe (ed)  The Letters and Works of Lady Mary  Wortley Montagu (1837).

L'architecture est le miroir me"  me de la vie. Il n'est que de jeter les yeux sur des e  difices pour sentir la pre  sence du passe  , l'esprit d'un lieu; ils sont le reflet de la socie  te  . Architecture is the very mirror of life.You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.

- I(eoh) M(ing) Pei
  Les Grands desseins du Louvre (with E J Biasini).

Mental reflectionissomuchmore interesting thanTV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.

- Robert M(aynard) Pirsig
  Zen and theArt of Motorcycle Maintenance, pt.3, ch.17.