#reflect

He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#reflection #men

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. ↗

— Jim Rohn

#reflective #motivational

It was all he'd felt for too long to change now. Maybe it was too late for any other kind of life. This was all he knew. It was safe, insulated. Familiar. An absense of emotion kept him sane. Or what passed for it. ↗

— Virginia Brown

#reflection #change

The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul. ↗

— John O'Donohue

#reflection #sacred #secret #shine #soul

That we are not totally transformed, that we can turn away, turn the page, switch the channel, does not impugn the ethical value of an assault by images. It is not a defect that we are not seared, that we do not suffer enough, when we see these images. Neither is the photograph supposed to repair our ignorance about the history and causes of the suffering it picks out and frames. Such images cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged? All this, with the understanding that moral indignation, like compassion, cannot dictate a course of action. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#compassion #photography #reflection #photography

Live your epitaph ↗

— Zoe Weil

#education #epitaph #humane #introspective #live

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#reflection #individuality

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it. ↗

— Morton Hunt

#any #break #break up #determination #failure

It is when you lose sight of yourself, that you lose your way. To keep your truth in sight you must keep yourself in sight and the world to you should be a mirror to reflect to you your image; the world should be a mirror that you reflect upon. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#inspirational-attitude #inspirational-life #inspirational-quotes #mirror #reflections

Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. It is the deepest faith we have, and the unbeliever- the blasphemer, the dissenter- will stimulate in us the most righteous of furies. ↗

— Ken Kesey

#realism-truth #reflection #faith