Sober Reflection Quotes

Each of us should realize the importance of having a talk with our own soul ~ Sunday Adelaja

Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!"
"Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections. ~ Susanna Clarke

Hactar had been shocked by the whole idea. He tried to explain that he had been thinking about this Ultimate Weapon business, and had worked out that there was no conceivable consequence of not setting the bomb off that was worse than the known consequence of setting it off, and he had therefore taken the liberty of introducing a small flaw into the design of the bomb, and he hoped that everyone involved would, on sober reflection, feel that ~ Douglas Adams

Sober, gainfully employed, and physically secure once again, Kevin began to relax. His confidence slowly returned. For the first time since the onset of his blindness, he let his guard down and a crack in his carefully constructed veneer formed.
Light flooded in.
And with it, hope. ~ Traci Medford-Rosow

The danger of refusing to reflect upon the psychological dynamics of faith and belief is that what we feel to be self evidently true, for psychological reasons, might be, upon inspection, highly questionable, intellectually or morally. Too often, as we all know, the 'feeling of rightness' trumps sober reflection and moral discernment. Further, we are often unwilling to listen to others until we are, to some degree, psychologically open to persuasion. The Parable of the Sower comes to mind. ~ Richard Beck

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. ~ H.L. Mencken

But the man who, by dint of long study and sober reflection, has succeeded in training his mind not to detect evil in anything, to consider all human actions with the utmost indifference, to regard them all as the inevitable consequences of a power - however it's defined - which is sometimes good and sometimes perverse but always irresistible, and gives rise to both what men approve and to what they condemn and never allows anything to distract or thwart its operations, such a man, I say, as you will agree, sir, may be as happy behaving as I behave as you are in the career which you follow. Happiness is an abstraction, a product of the imagination. It is one manner of being moved and depends exclusively on our way of seeing and feeling. Apart from the satisfaction of our needs, there is no single thing which makes all men happy. Every day we observe one man made happy by the circumstance which makes his neighbour supremely miserable. There is therefore nothing which guarantees happiness. It can only exist for us in the form given to it by our physical constitution and our philosophical principles. [...] Nothing in the world is real, nothing which merits praise or blame, nothing deserving reward or punishment, nothing which is unlawful here and perfectly legal five hundred leagues away, in other words, there is no unchanging, universal good. ~ Marquis De Sade

On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century ... First of all, what style should I employ? ~ Umberto Eco

Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Let's make a game of it, shall we?" she said. "Whoever kills the most, wins."
"I will kill twenty!" Lydia declared.
"I will kill thirty!" Kitty countered.
Mary paused for a moment of sober calculation.
"I will kill thirty-two." she said.
"I will kill as long as I must," said Jane.
"And I will kill as long as I can," said Elizabeth ~ Steve Hockensmith

Many studies have established the fact that there is a high correlation between vocabulary and intelligence and that the ability to increase one's vocabulary throughout life is a sure reflection of intellectual progress. ~ Bergen Evans

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. ~ George Meredith

Reality manifests itself as constant and objective - independent of us, but as changeable in space and time. Consequently, its reflection in us contains both properties. Mixed up in our mind, these properties are confused and we do not have a proper image of reality. ~ Piet Mondrian

In the reflection I see my shoulder-length curly brown hair. My lime-green pajamas. My striped slippers. ~ Sarah Mlynowski

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest. ~ Anne Tyler

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible. ~ Alex Tizon

This is the way I look when I'm sober. It's enough to make a person drink, don't you say? ~ Lee Remick

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it. ~ Cal Thomas

Morals, including especially, our institutions of property, freedom and justice, are not a creation of man's reason but a distinct second endowment conferred on him by cultural evolution - runs counter to the main intellectual outlook of the twentieth century. The influence of rationalism has indeed been so profound and pervasive that, in general, the more intelligent an educated person is, the more likely he or she now is not only to be a rationalist, but also to hold socialist views (regardless of whether he or she is sufficiently doctrinal to attach to his or her views any label, including 'socialist'). The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions. Rationalists tend to be intelligent and intellectual; and intelligent intellectuals tend to be socialist.
One's initial surprise at finding that intelligent people tend to be socialist diminishes when one realises that, of course, intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence, and to suppose that we must owe all the advantages and opportunities that our civilisation offers to deliberate design rather than to following traditional rules, and likewise to suppose that we can, by exercising our reason, eliminate any remaining undesired features by still more intelligence reflection, and still more appropriate design and 'rational coordination' of our undertakings. This leads one to be favorably disposed to the central e ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

I don't say that the drunk man is the real man, and the sober man merely a shell. But you find out something different about people when they're drunk. Of course, you sometimes find that they're not different at all
that you merely get more of the same, perhaps said rather more loudly and incoherently, but basically the same. ~ Kingsley Amis

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures? ~ Michael Connelly

And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

While self-esteem touches virtually every aspect of our existence, there are two aspects to which it is related in very distinct and powerful ways: work and love. Through work and through love, we act out the level of our confidence and our sense of personal worth. The drama of our life is the external reflection of our internal vision of ourselves. The higher the level of our self-esteem, the more likely it is that we will find a work and a love through which we can express ourselves in satisfying and enriching ways. ~ Nathaniel Branden

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is. ~ C. G. Jung

Why don't you come sober, Prime Minister?

[The answer she gave to Churchill when he asked about what disguise he should wear to a masquerade ball] ~ Nancy Astor

I'd like to think there's a simple reason why people visit reflection pools. When you look into one on a clear day, you see your own mirror image. When there's a storm, and the rain is splashing the surface, or the wind whips the water up in rippling waves, it becomes impossible to see a clear image of anything. It's easy to feel as if you're lost in the storm. But storms don't last. ~ Cassia Leo

Let me put the contrast in a single concrete example. The physician who finds time to give personal attention to his patients and listens to them. carefully probing inner conditions that may be more significant than any laboratory reports, has become a rarity. Where the power complex is dominant, a visit to a physician is paced, not to fit the patient's needs, but mainly to perform the succession of physical tests upon which the diagnosis will be based. Yet if there were a sufficient number of competent physicians on hand whose inner resources were as available as their laboratory aids, a more subtle diagnosis might be possible, and the patient's subjective response might in many cases effectively supplement the treatment. Thoreau expressed this to perfection when he observed in his 'Journal' that "the really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure."

Without this slowing of the tempo of all activities the positive advantages of plenitude could not be sufficiently enjoyed; for the congestion of time is as threatening to the good life as the congestion of space or people, and produces stresses and tensions that equally undermine human relations. The inner stability that such a slowdown brings about is essential to the highest uses of the mind, through opening up that second life which one lives in reflection and contemplation and self-scrutiny. The means to escape from ~ Lewis Mumford

All hatred is self-hatred, just as all healing is self-healing. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Unless you are silent, you will not
know your urgent heart, how it beats
between the thin skin of yes and no. ~ Drew Myron

I think there's a terrible price to be paid when your exterior life is not an honest reflection of your interior life. ~ Gene Robinson

Julian was not insensible of the advantages of freedom. From his studies he had imbibed the spirit of ancient sages and heroes; his life and fortunes had depended on the caprice of a tyrant; and, when he ascended the throne, his pride was sometimes mortified by the reflection that the slaves who would not dare to censure his defects were not worthy to applaud his virtues. ~ Edward Gibbon

You could look at the work of any Dutch master for an idea of the morning light we cycle through. There is a white cleanness to it, a rinsed quality. It's a sober light, without, for example, any of the orange particulate glow you get from the Mediterranean sun. ~ Russell Shorto

Your childhood dream delights God. I don't say that because every secret dream will come true. But having a dream is evidence of a person who is fully alive. Having a dream is a reflection of the image of God. ~ Emily P. Freeman

Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

Just as the banqueteers are drunk from wine, the citizens are drunk from fears, hopes, desires, and aversions and are therefore in need of being ruled by a man who is sober. ~ Leo Strauss

When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. ~ Arthur Koestler

Anyhow, I get distracted a lot," she repeated.

She felt like a dry branch, sticking out of the air. Brittle, covered in old bark. Maybe she was thirsty, but there was no water nearby. And above all the suffocating certainty that if a man were to embrace her at that moment she would feel not a soft sweetness in her nerves, but lime juice stinging them, her body like wood near fire, warped, crackling, dry. She couldn't soothe herself by saying: this is just a pause, life will come afterwards like a wave of blood, washing over me, moistening my parched wood. She couldn't fool herself because she knew she was also living and that those moments were the peak of something difficult, of a painful experience for which she should be thankful: almost as if she were feeling time outside herself, in a detached manner. ~ Clarice Lispector

Since boyhood, the sandy coast of Southern California with its mazes of rocky crags towering high above the Pacific had been Gower Champion's refuge for reflection. ~ John Anthony Gilvey

The impossibility of keeping Englishmen sober ashore was a constant source of complaint, It was the great weakness of 16th century English infantrymen, whose performance when sober was admired even by the Spaniards. Already it was true, as it was to be for centuries, that many saw and despised the drunken sailor ashore, but few knew and admired him at his work afloat. ~ Nicholas Rodger

From the beginning, the gospel message has had a profound eschatological component. The compelling challenge for every person is the inevitability of the ultimate catastrophe of death. It haunts us particularly as we age and realize as parents die and out peers depart that we are, in some sense, "next." Man was not created to die. God placed eternity in his heart and an immortal spirit that cannot comprehend the end of life. Fear of our mortality lurks in the background of our lives, dampening our joys, and in sober moments, bringing us to an awareness of our overwhelming fragility. Much of modern life is an attempt to live as though we will be here forever. It is a fantasy of denial, supported by the pleasures of the moment, which collectively serve as a narcotic, dulling the awareness of death's certainty and near proximity.
The message of the gospel is the message of life for us, a life out of death, provided in the person of our substitute, Jesus Christ. As the only one qualified to face the foe, He took all that death could give – energized by Satan's rage – and came out the victor, providing immortality to all who would believe in Him. His victory was not simply the means of our return to Eden's joys, with their attendant vulnerability to the possibility of yet another fall. It closed the door forever to another intrusion of sin and death by giving perfect, sinless immortality to those who are His own. He gave them the absolute promise of eternal perfection, the u ~ John E. Hartman

The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have. ~ Francesca Lia Block

That's sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something ... real." Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. "Real love, real friends, real body parts ... ~ Jess C. Scott

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you. ~ Emil Cioran

You cannot tie your fiance to the railroad track of self-reflection and personal improvement. ~ Amy Dickinson

He was no longer strictly a man, if he had ever been one. He was like an onion, slowly peeling away one layer at a time, only it was the trappings of humanity that seemed to be peeling away: organized reflection, memory, possibly even free will ... if there ever had been such a thing. ~ Stephen King

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race. ~ Giambattista Vico

Women have said the most malicious, disgusting things about me. But I know that when somebody comments about you, good or bad, it is 99 percent of the time their projection of how they feel about themselves. ~ Paz De La Huerta

Nd you will have many opportunities to take in human civilization at its highest levels of achievement..approach this experience as a small child might approach a mud puddle. You can lean over and look at yourself in the reflection, maybe stick a finger in it, an cause a little ripple. Or you can dive in, thrash around, and find out what it feels like, what it tastes like ... I urge you to jump in. And I look forward to seeing you, back here, at the end of this experience, covered in mud. ~ Bruce Feiler

To me there is no difference between one person and another; I behold all as soul-reflection s of the one God. I can't think of anyone as a stranger, for I know that we are all part of the One Spirit. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road. ~ Susan Meissner

Always move forward. Every problem you encounter is an opportunity for you to prove that you are Batman in a business suit. When shit goes down and the sheep freeze up, you need to answer the call and start throwing haymakers. Batman doesn't do damage control. Batman does damage. If you drop me down a well, I won't waste energy crying "Why?" like Nancy Kerrigan after taking a nightstick to the knee. I will tunnel out of there like my grandparents did when they were escaping the Nazis. Eventually there will be a time for reflection, accountability, and divine retribution, but not until you get out of that goddamn hole. ~ Ari Gold

She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic. ~ Dennis Lehane

First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. ~ Plato

The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages. ~ Albert Einstein

I'm sober."
"That's not my concern. I know you'll never make that mistake again."
"Then what's your concern?" the younger man asked, his tone aggressive.
"You and her. ~ Erika Johansen