Have you ever spent some time looking at yourself in the mirror and described what you see? Self-reflection is important to assess whether or not you’re life and your heart is in the right place. Are you doing what’s best for you and the people you love? Have you been a good role model for the people around you? These reflection quotes we compiled will help you think about what you can do better and what are the things or the people you are grateful for in this lifetime.
Reflection Quotes
1. Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. – Charles Dickens
2. If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. – Michel de Montaigne
3. Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead. – Yvonne Woon
4. Each person you meet is an aspect of yourself, clamoring for love. – Eric Micha’el Leventhal
5. Living in a way that reflects one’s values is not just about what you do, it is also about how you do things. – Deborah Day
6. Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous. – Confucius
7. There is no future without a past because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition. – Siri Hustvedt
8. Sometimes it’s hard to look at a flower when your dying inside. – Anthony Liccione
9. You are a mirror of yourself in others. Whatever you want, give. Be the best reflection of yourself. – Karen A. Baquiran
10. Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people. – Albert Einstein
11. Time and reflection change the sight little by little ’til we come to understand. – Paul Cezanne
12. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
13. Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. – T. Harv Eker
14. People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another. – Rumi
15. Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults. – Benjamin Franklin
16. It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. – Samuel Johnson
17. Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
18. One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others. – Lao Tzu
19. Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us. – Alan Cohen
20. If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it. – Rev. Jesse Jackson
21. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong, you can never know what you are doing right. – Chen Xinhua
22. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. – Mark Twain
23. Sometimes you have to take a half step back to take two forward. – Vince McMahon
24. Who apart from ourselves, can see any difference between our victories and our defeats. – Christopher Fry
25. If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values that all reality hinges on moral foundations, and that all reality has spiritual control. – Martin Luther King Jr.
26. Study the past if you would define the future. – Confucius
27. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. – Buddha
28. We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust. – David Levithan
29. All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. – Friedrich Nietzsche
30. Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. – Charles Dickens
31. Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness. – Poppy Z.Brite
32. When you love someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers. What was it that you wanted and why didn’t you fight for it?. – Shannon L. Alder
33. Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be. – Charles Bukowski
34. Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him. – Bill Watterson
35. One of the saddest things in life is the things one remembers. – Agatha Christie
36. If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. – Michel de Montaigne
37. The writer’s curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored. – Criss Jami
38. Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again. – Gautama Buddha
39. Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead. – Yvonne Woon
40. Sorry, always sorry. What in the world can you buy with an apology?. – Marie Lu
41. Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you. – Shannon L. Alder
42. The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection. – Thomas Paine
43. As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart. – Proverb
44. Self-reflection is a humbling process. It’s essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things then better yourself. – Sonya Teclai
45. What we focus on the outside is a reflection of what we feel inside.
46. Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, make a different choice.
47. Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds. – Buddha
48. People who have had little self-reflection live life in a huge reality blind spot. – Bryant McGill
49. You attract what you are, not what you want. So if you want it then reflect it. – Tony Gaskins
50. To achieve the happiness I advocate four major principles. The principles of love, wisdom, self-reflection, and progress. – Ryuho Okawa
51. Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success. – Richard Carlson
52. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. – Margaret J. Wheatley
53. Your life is a reflection of your thoughts. If you change your thinking, you change your life. – Brian Tracy
54. Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. – Ernest Holmes
55. I am a reflection of my own soul.
56. Be a reflection of what you’d like to receive. If you want love, give love. If you want the truth, be truthful. What you give out will always return. – Kristen Butler
57. Reflective thinking turns the experience into insight. – John C. Maxwell
58. It seems the great advantage of people who annoy us is motivation to engage in reflection. – Auliq Ice
59. Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us. – Alan Cohen
60. Self-reflection is the school of wisdom. – Baltasar Gracian
61. The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind. – Wayne Dyer
62. It’s a beautiful thing for mind, body, and spirit to take some time daily for reflection.
63. People are too quick to pass judgment and too slow to self-reflect.
64. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect. – Mark Twain
65. Living in a way that reflects one’s values is not just about what you do, it is also about how you do things. – Deborah Day
66. Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted – it is an intimate date with yourself. – Dr. Paul TP Wong
67. 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
68. 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
69. The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you. – Rumi
70. The way we reflect the world around us is the direct reflection of the world within us.
71. Your soul needs time for solitude and self-reflection. In order to love, lead, heal, and create, you must nourish yourself first. – Louise Hay
72. Self-reflection is necessary to dig beneath our own layers and visit the inner crevices of our heart and mind to develop an understanding of life.
73. In a mirror is where we find a reflection of our appearances, but in a heart is where we find a reflection of our soul.
74. Life is only a reflection of what we allow ourselves to see and be. – Trudy Symeonakis Vesotsky
75. The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life. – Iyanla Vanzant
76. If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. – Marcus Garvey
77. If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. – Marcus Garvey
78. Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. – Barbara De Angelis
79. There is one art of which people should be masters the art of reflection. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
80. Friendship with one’s self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. – Eleanor Roosevelt
81. The people accusing me of being productive don’t know how hard it is for me to just bend my elbow sometimes. – Lena Dunham
82. 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
83. Emotions are there to enjoy life, but they are not used in self-reflection because they inhibit a proper reflection. They gunk us up. – Frederick Lenz
84. Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion. – Suzan-Lori Parks
85. Self-reflection is the gateway to freedom. It also brings greater appreciation and enjoyment. We begin to enjoy spending time with our own mind, and we enjoy reflecting on our experience of the teachings. Like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, the teachings of the dharma become clear. – Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
86. A worldview is probably an expression of self. – Michael Leunig
87. Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know myself, to know it completely. – Kahlil Gibran
88. Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me. – Immanuel Kant
89. The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates
90. Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. – George Washington Carver
91. Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. – Alexander Graham Bell
92. He that knows himself, knows others. – Charles Caleb Colton
93. Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
94. The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within. – Gandhi
95. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. – William Faulkner
96. It’s not the plan that is important, it’s the planning. – Graeme Edwards
97. 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
98. 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
99. The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you. – Vanna Bonta
100. Everything that happens to us is a reflection of who we are. – Deepak Chopra
101. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way. – Margaret J. Wheatley
102. The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you. – Cory Booker
103. Reflect upon your present blessings. – Charles Dickens
104. The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else’s eyes. – Voltaire
105. Reflect on what’s best. Move on on what’s not.
106. The love you feel in life is a reflection of the love you feel in yourself. – Deepak Chopra
107. Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us. – Alan Cohen
108. There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. – Edith Wharton
109. It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly. – Claude Monet
110. A photograph must come from imagination and not be a reflection of what is. – Thierry Mugler
111. Study without reflection is a waste of time reflection without study is dangerous. – Confucius
112. Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him. – Bill Watterson
113. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
114. Self-reflection is the school of wisdom. – Baltasar Gracian
115. O, happy the soul that saw its own faults. – Rumi
116. The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind. – Wayne Dyer
117. The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection. – Thomas Paine
118. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. – Margaret J. Wheatley
119. True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self-elements. – Nhat Nanh
120. Self-reflection is an important stage to diagnose, develop and strengthen your creativity. – Pearl Zhu
121. The ultimate mystery is one’s own self. – Sammy Davis
122. To realize the Self is to be still. – Ramana Maharshi
123. The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming. – Kirkegaard
124. 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
125. We cannot see our reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see. – Zen
126. Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light. – Abdullah ibn Alawi al-Haddad
127. Reflection on the infinite seems to call, almost by definition, for infinite reflection. – Daniel Taylor
128. Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success. – Richard Carlson
129. Reflection can transform something familiar. – Diane L. Dunton
130. We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
131. Your greatest self has been waiting your whole life; don’t make it wait any longer. – Dr. Steve Maraboli
132. We do not learn from experience we learn from reflecting on experience. – John Dewey
133. No matter where you are in life right now, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are it is never late to be who you are meant to be. – Esther and Jerry Hicks
134. If you are not evolving, you are dying. – Marcus Lemonis
135. Unless you learn to face your own shadows, you will continue to see them in others, because the world outside you is only a reflection of the world inside you.
136. People who have had little self-reflection live life in a huge reality blind-spot. – Bryant McGill
137. You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company. – Diane von Furstenberg
138. 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
139. Reflection is a necessity. If it wasn’t, you won’t be who you are today.
140. I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed. – Dolly Parton
141. The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. – William Makepeace Thackeray
142. Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him. – John Locke
143. It took a lot of years of me on my own, coaching myself, to look in the mirror and love the reflection. – Alyssa Edwards
144. I learned a few years ago that balance is the key to a happy and successful life, and a huge part of achieving that balance is to instill rituals into your everyday life a nutritious balanced diet, daily exercise, time for yourself through meditation, reading, journaling, yoga, daily reflection, and setting goals. – Gretchen Bleiler
145. We all strive for balance, often moving to extremes to find ourselves somewhere in the middle where we can sustainably exist in optimal inspiration. Working toward balance takes a lot of ingredients. We need courage, reflection, attention, action, and a push-and-pull relationship between effort and relaxation. – Tara Stiles
146. We experience happiness as a series of pleasing moments. They come and go like clouds, unpredictable, fleeting, and without responsibility to our desires. Through honest self-work, reflection, and meditation, we begin to string more of these moments together, creating a web-like design of happiness that drapes around our lives. – Tara Stiles
147. Change comes from reflection. – Genesis P-Orridge
148. Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. – John Quincy Adams
149. 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
150. You know, it’s funny how songs continue to grow and evolve and become a new and deeper reflection of your life. – Gloria Estefan
151. But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of. – Helena Blavatsky
152. You don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Today is going to be a comedy day.’ And the next day, ‘Today’s going to be a drama day.’ Things happen in life that are fun and light, and things happen that are heavier. You just have to move your way through life, and I think ‘BoJack’ is a good reflection of that. – Will Arnett
153. Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness. – Wilhelm Wundt
154. When we were shooting ‘The Book Thief,’ I was keeping all these journals. And I remember talking to my mom, really trying to verbalize all the experiences I was having. And I remember my mom saying, ‘Ben, reflection is a retroactive process. When you’re going through it, that’s the time to just let it wash over you. – Ben Schnetzer
155. There is an idea of, you know, informing people about some emerging things. And part of that is just a reflection of my own interest, following different areas and saying, you know, look what they’re doing now. – Michael Crichton
156. 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
157. A moment’s reflection shows that Liberalism is entirely negative. It is not a formative force, but always and only a disintegrating force. – Francis Parker Yockey
158. I am a reflection of my mother. – Kartik Aaryan
159. We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material well being, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational. – Terry Eagleton
160. Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature. – George Crumb
161. The premise of anything you do whether it’s writing a song or any business is ultimately that it hinges heavily on your belief in the thing that you’re doing and promoting and selling. It’s a reflection of who you are in a very deep way. – Isaac Hanson
162. I think the way you dress is a direct reflection out of what you will get out of your day; you make the effort, people will notice. You’ll feel better, and those around you will feel better. – Nick Wooster
163. As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there’s great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work. – Elizabeth Berg
164. We too, through lack of knowledge and of sufficiently mature reflection, mistook the visible outward appearance of the phenomenon for the phenomenon itself. – Leon Jouhaux
165. You can’t take people’s opinions personally. Usually what people say about it is a reflection of them own issues. – Terrence J
166. Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something. – Eric Hoffer