Quotes about mirror (723 quotes, page 2)

“I take up my brush to explain the true spirit of this Ichi school as it is mirrored in the Way of heaven and Kwannon. The time is the night of the tenth day of the tenth month, at the hour of the tiger.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), Introduction
Context: When I reached thirty I looked back on my past. The previous victories were not due to my having mastered strategy. Perhaps it was natural ability, or the order of heaven, or that other schools' strategy was inferior. After that I studied morning and evening searching for the principle, and came to realise the Way of strategy when I was fifty.
Since then I have lived without following any particular Way. Thus with the virtue of strategy I practise many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher. To write this book I did not use the law of Buddha or the teachings of Confucius, neither old war chronicles nor books on martial tactics. I take up my brush to explain the true spirit of this Ichi school as it is mirrored in the Way of heaven and Kwannon. The time is the night of the tenth day of the tenth month, at the hour of the tiger.

School , Way , Time , Night

“I am alone in my monotonous country,
While all those around me live in the idolatry
Of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene
Herodiade, whose gaze is diamond keen …”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Hérodiade.
Hérodiade (1898)
Context: I am alone in my monotonous country,
While all those around me live in the idolatry
Of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene
Herodiade, whose gaze is diamond keen...
O final enchantment! yes, I sense it, I am alone.

Country

“Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Psychedelic Society (1984)
Context: Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves, and what is lacking is the clear vision of what should be done... What needs to be done is that fundamental, ontological conceptions of reality need to be redone. We need a new language, and to have a new language we must have a new reality... A new reality will generate a new language, a new language will fix a new reality, and make it part of this reality.

“My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (Munich, 1901), # 136, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 48
1895 - 1902

Heart

“Those men who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Folks little indebted to Nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Men , Nature

“Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it.”
Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulehra nostra cognoscimus.

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Morals in the Book of Job, 553d, as translated in Cultural Performances in Medieval France (2007), p. 129
Context: Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it. There we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty.

“If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature? Of course no one speaks about an exact mirror. No one even thinks of asking the new literature to have mirror-like impassivity. The deeper literature is, and the more it is imbued with the desire to shape life, the more significantly and dynamically it will be able to "picture" life.”

Leon Trotsky book Literature and Revolution

Literature and Revolution (1924), edited by William Keach (2005), Ch. 4 : Futurism, p. 120
Variants:
Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.
Remarks apparently derived from Trotsky's observations, or those he implies preceded his own, this is attributed to Bertolt Brecht in Paulo Freire : A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80, and to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9
Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.
Context: Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes. But at present even the handling of a hammer is taught with the help of a mirror, a sensitive film that records all the movements. Photography and motion-picture photography, owing to their passive accuracy of depiction, are becoming important educational instruments in the field of labor. If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature? Of course no one speaks about an exact mirror. No one even thinks of asking the new literature to have mirror-like impassivity. The deeper literature is, and the more it is imbued with the desire to shape life, the more significantly and dynamically it will be able to "picture" life.

Life , Literature , Thinking

“Anybody who says to me, "I want to have an interface with you," I say, "please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror." Anybody who says, "I want to communicate with you," I say, "Can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are."”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia, my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us. This relationship was called vision. Then, after Galileo, the idea developed that the eyes are receptors into which light brings something from the outside, keeping you separate from me even when I look at you. People began to conceive of their eyes as some kind of camera obscura. In our age people conceive of their eyes and actually use them as if they were part of a machinery. They speak about interface. Anybody who says to me, "I want to have an interface with you," I say, "please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror." Anybody who says, "I want to communicate with you," I say, "Can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are."

Way , Communication

“I am tryin’ to say it to Yoko, but to all women, you know? On behalf of all men, in a way. If that’s taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that – they’re reflections of society… Mirrors.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Last interview (1980)
Context: I’m 40, I wanna talk to the people my age. I’m happy if the young people like it, and I’m happy if the old people like it, I’m talkin’ to guys and gals that have been through what we went through, together — the sixties group that has survived. Survived the war, the drugs, the politics, the violence on the street – the whole she-bang – that we’ve survived it and we’re here. And I’m talkin’ to them. And the "Woman" song is to Yoko, but it’s to all women. And, because my role in society – or any artist or poet’s role – is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it’s like that’s the job of the artist in society, not to... they’re not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It’s fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. That’s what it’s about – artists, or poets or whatever you wanna call it. And that’s what I’m tryin’ to express on behalf of all the men to all the women, through my own feelings about women – when it dawned on me, "God! It is the other half of the sky" as the late-great Chairman MacDougal said, right? I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there’s nothing. There’s only the two together creating children, creating society. So what’s all this B. S. about, you know, "women are this" and "men are that" – we’re all human, man. We’re all human. And, I am tryin’ to say it to Yoko, but to all women, you know? On behalf of all men, in a way. If that’s taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that – they’re reflections of society... Mirrors.

Women , Men , Way , Feeling

“When an actor marries an actress they both fight for the mirror.”

Burt Reynolds (1936–2018) American actor, director and producer.

Fight

“When I look in the mirror, I just want to like myself… And if I like myself, then I look good.”

Джиа Мари Каранджи (1960–1986)

“The world is as neutral as a mirror. We perceive in it only what we put before it.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

World

“A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.”

Edgar Allan Poe book William Wilson

William Wilson (1839)

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Solaris (1961)

Time , Search , Past , Silence

“I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Source: Song Song Man in the Mirror

World , Making love , Way , Change

“The day I shaved my head was the most empowering moment of my whole life. The last strand of hair cut off was the moment my whole face was on show and I couldn't hide behind my hair like I used to. As I looked in the mirror I realised I had one job to do. Inspire ... Shaving your head is so empowering. You don't need hair to be beautiful. You are beautiful with or without. I learnt that too.”

Millie Bobby Brown (2004) British actress

"Millie Bobby Brown admits tension with her Stranger Things co-stars" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5546137/Millie-Bobby-Brown-admits-theres-tension-Stranger-Things-stars.html. dailymail.co.uk. (26 March 2018).

Beauty , Life

“Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it. There we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Morals in the Book of Job, 553d, as translated in Cultural Performances in Medieval France (2007), p. 129
Original: (la) Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulchra nostra cognoscimus.

Beauty , Learning

“It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Soul , Truth , Men

“The multi-dimensional aspects of water are amazing. Water contains within itself the knowing or the memory of anything it comes into contact with. This means it carries the knowing and the memory of a place and the happenings there, going back sometimes thousands of years. It is full of information… Sort of like a mirror that keeps the reflection of anything it has ever encountered.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

Water , Memory

“It's a good idea to carry a small mirror in your pocket, which will give you a reflection of yourself before you judge others.”

Titon Rahmawan

Idea

“Always focus on the front windshield and not the review mirror.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

Pleasure , Painting

“Like all of my fictions, Sinner is a mirror. Look into it and you will find yourself. What you do with what you see is your choice.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

“It’s very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Feeling

“I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Beauty , Happy , People , Beauty

“No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“2) Never fire a laser at a mirror.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Niven's Laws

“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“Mirroring behavior. When a mark takes a drink from his water glass, so should you. When he smiles, so should you. Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Smile , Behavior , Drink , Water

“I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.”

Judy Collins (1939) American singer and songwriter

“Live to discover, as long as discovery leads to a love that comes from the Creator… writing was the mirror to life.”

Ted Dekker book Showdown

Source: Showdown

Love , Life

“When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Secret , Soul

“Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Books , Faith

“One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

“Including a mention of your impressive record…. The man who had penetrated and copied over a thousand techniques.. Kakashi the mirror ninja.”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto, Vol. 02: The Worst Client

“The problem for me is that I can't ever really see who Gregory is, any more than I can see what a mirror by itself looks like, because he reflects whoever's around him.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Problem

“that books were mirrors, reflective in sometimes unpredictable ways.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Books , Way

“I looked in my mirror and saw, not myself, but every place I'd never been.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

“She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“The thing about the Mirror is that no one knows where it is. In fact, no one knows what it is.”
"It’s a mirror,” Simon said. “You know – reflective, glass. I’m just assuming.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Travel

“I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here."
"So what do you think it meant?"
"I'm not sure," Jace admitted, "but I know I look damn good delivering it.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Thinking

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Business , World , Business

“The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

World

“Written on the mirror, revealed by the steam, were the words, I love you, Jane.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Love

“Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Source: Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Children

“I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to man has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Source: The Seventh Seal

World , Dreams , Feeling , Heart

“I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Housing

“Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the 'other self" is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Age , Learning

“I'm never overwhelmed or under it either; just nicely whelmed. I'm OK. Nothing spectacular but sometimes special. I look in the mirror and see this medium average person. A little tired, a little sad, but not falling apart.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Sadness , Personality

“There are two ways of spreading light.. to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Deep , Inspirational , Motivational , Leadership

“Mirror becomes a razor when it's broken. A stick becomes a flute when it's loved.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings

Love

“The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

For Bestfriend , Courage

“Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Dreams , Art , Soul

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” His stunning green eyes bore through me. “A corpse
convention?” Even sweaty, Trevor was gorgeous.
“What are you running away from?” I retorted. “Your mirror?”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

“… will you be so kind as to provide me with a few places where I might look for a murderer?"
"The mirror's a great place to start”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful… or if the fall had changed the story completely.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

Beauty , Change , Princess

“What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who will see me like that?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Life , Soul

“I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Friendship , Drink

“THE VOICE: (to BEAUTY) Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life , Beauty

“She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Beauty , Time

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“Where we live in the world
is never one place. Our hearts,
those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us
moons before we are ready for them.”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952) American writer

Source: 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

World , Dogs , Heart

“… even a mirror will not show you yourself, if you do not wish to see.”

Roger Zelazny Lord of Light

Source: Lord of Light

“Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.”

Isobelle Carmody book Greylands

Source: Greylands

Truth

“In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest,
And read the authentic message of his eyes.”

Edgar Lee Masters book Spoon River Anthology

Lyman King
Source: Spoon River Anthology

Fate , Time , Reading

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Graduation , Teachers' Day , Education

“Dear Depression, please keep your distance. Don’t be nasty. Find some other person with more reason than me to look in the mirror and say: “What a pointless existence.” Whether you like it or not, I know how to defeat you. You’re wasting your time.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Time , Personality

“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

World

“You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. find yourself a mirror while I continue.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Help

“It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power, the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Variant: It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.
Source: Invisible Monsters

Money , Beauty , Way

“Isn't there a mirror someplace where you can go admire yourself?"
"I never knew a woman so hung up on my good looks."
"All your women are hung up on your good looks. They just pretend it's your personality.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: This Heart of Mine

Women , Personality

“Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Truth

“If Dracula can't see his reflection in a mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Love After Love
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Love , Life , Heart

“Well, what? Sophie-"
"I hit her on the head with a mirror," Sophie said hopelessly. "One of those silver-backed ones, so it was quite heavy. She went down just like a stone, miss. So I… I tied her to the bed and I came looking for you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“For years I have had no mirror; I have learned to make do. The eyes of another can be a mirror more effective than water. If you will look at me, I can see my reflection in yours”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Learning , Water

“The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005)

People

“What does a mirror look at?”

Frank Herbert book Chapterhouse: Dune

Source: Chapterhouse: Dune

“It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”

James Baldwin book This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

Source: This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

People , Truth , Personality

“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday (2 February)
Source: Nausea (1938)

People , Learning , Appearance

“Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.”

Gene Wolfe book The Urth of the New Sun

Source: The Urth of the New Sun

Imagination , Learning

“The mirror is my best friend because when I cry it never laughs.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Cry

“One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand

Love , Life

“I take my spirit and I smash my mirrors,
And now the whole world is here for me to see,
Now I'm searching for my love to be.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Room Full Of Mirrors
Song lyrics, Rainbow Bridge (1971)
Context: I used to live in a room full of mirrors,
All I could see was me.
Then I take my spirit and I smash my mirrors,
And now the whole world is here for me to see,
Now I'm searching for my love to be.

Love , World , Search

“People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too… Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

People

“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 (1962) American children's writer

Source: Pink Smog

Life , Girl

“There was a loud cough from the man on the stand. I replaced My Magic Mirror carefully on his tray, gave him a cheesy smile, and went my way.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand

Smile , Way

“I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Light

“Broken vows are like broken mirrors. They leave those who held to them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves. (pg. 161)”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Promise Me

“We too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look in to ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Heart , Perfection

“Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.”

David Brin Brightness Reef

Source: Brightness Reef

People

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
Source: On Being Blonde (2007), p. 54

People , Personality