As we go about our lives, it’s important to reflect on our progress and what still needs to be done. These quotes about reflection help us see our next steps forward. They remind us that it’s ok to take a step back and assess our situation so that we can move forward in the right direction. By taking time to reflect on our lives, we can make sure that we’re living in line with our values and goals. So, let these quotes inspire you to take a closer look at your life and figure out what you need to change in order to move closer towards your dreams.
Quotes About Reflection
I will keep constant watch over myself and — most usefully — will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil — that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Growing into the worlds above us, realizing the higher realms of consciousness within us, requires that we outgrow the worlds beneath us.
Guy Finley
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
Margaret J. Wheatley
Great leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, self-reflection, education, training, and experience.
Tony Buon
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
Carl Jung
Honest self-understanding liberates us from our stuck emotions.
C Terry Warner
Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.
Barbara De Angelis
Our self-image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
Maxwell Martz
We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.
John Dewey
Self-reflection entails asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future.
Robert L. Rosen
Don’t become too preoccupied with what is happening around you. Pay more attention to what is going on within you. Mary-
Frances Winters
Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds.
Buddha
Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success.
Richard Carlson
Dwell not on the faults and shortcomings of others; instead, seek clarity about your own.
Buddha
No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility for his own education.
Johann Carolus
Spiritual growth requires the development of inner knowing and inner authority. It requires the heart, not the intellect.
Gary Zukav
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience which is bitterest.
Confucius
What a teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.
Karl Menninger
Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted – it is an intimate date with yourself.
Paul TP Wong
You attract what you are, not what you want. So if you want it then reflect it.
Tony Gaskins
Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.
Eckhart Tolle
Your life is a reflection of your thoughts. If you change your thinking, you change your life.
Brian Tracy
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Ernest Holmes
Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.
John C. Maxwell
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.
Alan Cohen
Self-reflection is the school of wisdom.
Baltasar Gracian
The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
Wayne Dyer
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Self-reflection entail asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future.
Robert L. Rosen
Your soul needs time for solitude and self-reflection. In order to love, lead, heal, and create, you must nourish yourself first.
Louise Hay
Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
Indra Devi
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds.
Gautama Buddha
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way.
Margaret J. Wheatley
The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and your world will be negative. Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results.
Michael LeBoeuf
When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.
Vanna Bonta
Everything that happens to us is a reflection of who we are.
Deepak Chopra
Art is not a reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection.
Jean-Luc Godard
The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else’s eyes.
Voltaire
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton
Time and reflection change the sight little by little ’till we come to understand.
Paul Cezanne
The love you feel in life is a reflection of the love you feel in yourself.
Deepak Chopra
It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
Claude Monet
Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.
Jane Austen
There is one art of which people should be masters – the art of reflection.
Samuel Taylor
Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.
T. Harv Eker
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter Drucker
The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind.
Wayne Dyer
Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?
Bill Watterson
Make sure the outside of you is a good reflection of the inside of you.
Jim Rohn
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
A photograph must come from imagination and not be a reflection of what is.
Thierry Mugler
Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
Albert Einstein
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.
Byron Katie
Women need real moments of solitude and self reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.
Barbara De Angelis
The mirror reflects all objects without being sullied.
Confucius
It is necessary.. for a man to go away by himself…to sit on a rock…and ask, ‘Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?
Carl Sandburg
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.
John Locke
What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.
Paulo Freire
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.
Desiderius Erasmus
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
Leonardo da Vinci
Love is a conflict between reflexes and reflections.
Magnus Hirschfeld
A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Beauty…is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Oscar Wilde
People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.
Janet Frame
Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.
Confucius
What you see in other people is a reflection of yourself. A person of goodness sees goodness in others and a person of evil sees evil in others.
Omar Suleiman
How people treat other people is a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves.
Paulo Coelho
Parting Words
Reflecting on our lives can be a powerful way to make connections and see patterns we may have missed before. The quotes about reflection that we’ve shared in this post are designed to help you think about your life in a new way, and maybe even find some inspiration for the future. What is your favorite quote about reflection? Let us know in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you!
P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Epiphanies
- Quotes About Finding Yourself
- Quotes About Hope
- Quotes About Memories
- Quotes About Influence
Originally Published: November 2, 2022
✍️ Ica, Peru
