Quotes about mirror
page 3

“A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.”

Simone Weil book Waiting for God

Source: Waiting for God

Beauty

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

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"Vesalius in Zante (1564)", in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631
Variant: There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.

Way, Light, Motivational, Deep

“Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Source: Burnt Tongues

People, Art

“But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Fear

“Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)”

Jonathan Stroud book The Ring of Solomon

Source: The Ring of Solomon

“Here is a list of fearful things:
The jaws of sharks, a vulture's wings,
The rabid bite of the dog's of war,
The voice of one who went before.
But most of all the mirror's gaze,
which counts us out our numbered days.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Abarat, Book One
Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

War, Fear, Dogs

“How do you make a girl know she's beautiful? What is the system for that, what do you show her, how do you give her a new set of eyes and turn her face back to the mirror?”

Michelle Tea (1971) American writer

Beauty, Girl

“Desire is like fog on a bathroom mirror -- its presence incites you to wipe the mirror, and see yourself clearly again.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 17
Context: Later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

“The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)

Life, Star

“His invitation lingers. So does my question. Why me? I don't know the answer. When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is a starving, stunted bird who never grew wings and lost all reason to sing.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Question, Bird, Singing

“Mirrors and images. Or sex and love. These are two separate systems that we miserably try to link.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Love, Sex

“She had wondered, when he’d looked into her eyes and said that he’d had to learn to make do without mirrors in the Wild Hunt, whose eyes he’d been looking into for all those years. Who’d been his mirror.
Now she knew.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Learning

“A need for revenge can burn long and hot. Especially if every glance in a mirror reinforces it.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Revenge

“You never want to look in a mirror," Lula said. "Men love mirrors. They look at themselves doing the deed and they see Rex the Wonder Horse. Women look at themselves and think they need to renew their membership at the gym.”

Janet Evanovich book Seven Up

Source: Seven Up

Love, Women, Men, Thinking

“When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Source: Delhi

World, Star, Night

“Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

Art

“Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say.
"It must be. The sensation is completely new. How have you managed it all these years?" he asks.
"Just avoid mirrors. You'll forget about it," I say.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Life, Time, Forgetting

“Mirrors should reflect before sending an image.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“Honestly, darling," she said. "Do you even look in a mirror before you walk out the door? Your hair's a mess."

He dodged her as she reached toward his head. "Are you kidding? I spend hours in front of the mirror toit look this way.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Way

“Though I was standing in front of a mirror, I wasn't really seeing my reflection. I was seeing, very clearly, that—at the moment—I was all in the world that Eric could think of as his own. I had better not fail him.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

World, Thinking

“Look in the mirror and one thing is sure: what we see is not who we are.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“The bathroom mirror has not budged, the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say and looks me in the eye- says do you prefer the easy way? No? Well ok then, dont cry.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Truth, Way, Cry

“There's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror.”

Stephen King book Rage

Source: Rage

Happiness

“There are some things more important than physical survival. You gotta be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Circus of the Damned

Source: Circus of the Damned

“Maybe you saw her first? Caught a glimpse between the lines, between the letters, like a ghost in the mirror, a ghost in the wings?”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Loneliness

“The eyes mirror the heart of a person. An entire life can be seen through them. Love, sorrow, deceit, pain. If you look closely, it’s all there.”

Gail Tsukiyama (1957) American writer

Source: The Language of Threads

Love, Life, Pain, Heart

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…

Life, People, Soul, Thinking

“The water caught the Falselight glimmer like layers of shifting, translucent mirrors and formed split-second works of art in the air, but men cursed it anyway, because it made their heads wet.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Men, Art, Water

“Gazing into the mirror, I saw myself as I was-a black silhouette in the room, a woman whose darkness had completely leaked through.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

Time

“The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest

Mood

“I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me…”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.'
To live alone?'
To live. With what you are.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Suffering, Learning

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me…”

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

Source: The Aleph and Other Stories

“For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors.”

Helen Oyeyemi book Boy, Snow, Bird

Source: Boy, Snow, Bird

People, Way

“That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Heart, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

People, Time

“Please, sit down," Sharon said with another hair toss. I made a mental note to practice doing that in a mirror the next time I saw one. it seemed a useful skill, right up there with roundhouse kicks.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Time

“A novel is a mirror walking down a road”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Death, Food, Way

“Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Source: Old Christmas: From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving

Happiness, Smile, Light

“Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors”

Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972) Argentinian poet

“I just want to sleep with a clear conscience and wake up with the ability to look at myself in the mirror. I also want my life to be my own. Even if it's a shitty goddamn life, it's still mine.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Life, Sleep

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Beauty

“You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.”

John Irving book Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Source: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“Tessa was laying on her side, her brown hair spread over the pillow, watching Will, whose face was bent over the pages, with a look of tenderness in her eyes, a tenderness mirrored in the softness of Will's voice as he read.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Reading

“Usually people look at you when they're talking to you. I know that they're working out what I'm thinking, but I can't tell what they're thinking. It is like being in a room with a one-way mirror in a spy film.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

People, Way, Thinking

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967)

Future

“Afghanistan is not only the mirror of the Afghans: it is the mirror of the world. 'If you do not like the image in the mirror, do not break the mirror, break your face,' says an old Persian proverb.”

Ahmed Rashid book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

Source: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

World

“Stare at me in this faceless way, go mad with desire, and rip my clothes off. It's terrific. In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. The fantasy of rape — of which mine is in a kind of prepubescent sub-category — is common enough among women and (in mirror image) among men.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Nora Ephron: Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women, Knopf Publishing, New York, 1975

Love, Women, Men, Sex

“The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rearview mirror on your way to something better.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

Way

“Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors.”

Tarjei Vesaas book The Boat in the Evening

Source: The Boat in the Evening

“A writer should not run around with a mirror for his countrymen; he should tell his society and his times things no one ever thought before.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

Time

“If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me.”

Sarah Vowell book Take the Cannoli

Source: Take the Cannoli

“I am locked into the mirror and there is no door out.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“When I look in the mirror, I know I’m looking at someone who isn’t sure she deserves to be loved at all.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love

“Hey, our hair's the same color," I said, eying us side by side in the mirror.

"Sure is, girlfriend." Eric grinned at me.”

Charlaine Harris book Living Dead in Dallas

Source: Living Dead in Dallas

Color

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Way, Question, Personality

“Sure,” she said, and hugged the laptop bag closer. “What could go wrong?”
Michael’s eyes flashed to meet hers in the rearview mirror.
Besides everything, I mean,” she said.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

“It is true that your world is only a mirror of you.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

World

“For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Para uno de esos gnosticos, el visible universo era una ilusion o (mas precisamente) un sofisma. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables porque lo multiplican y lo divulgan.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

Universe

“Pandora, waking: …
I am alone. These faces in the mirrors
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself;
They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me,
Save the all-seeing Gods…
She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest
and fills the room. Pandora falls senseless on
the floor. Storm without.

Chorus of Dreams from the Gate of Horn: …
Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter
Shall afflict and vex mankind,
All into the air have risen
From the chambers of their prison;
Only Hope remains behind.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

God, Pain, Dreams, Hope

“The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.”

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

"Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv", in A Universal History of Iniquity (1935); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998). Cf. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

Error

“Rat and behavioral psychology … mirror the actual inhumanity of reality. Rat psychology is human psychology where a total society has trained human beings to be creatures of stimulus and response, i. e. rats. “Insofar as the hardening of society has reduced men more and more to objects,” wrote Adorno, “methods which convey this are no sacrilege. … The method serves freedom in that it wordlessly testifies to the prevailing unfreedom.” Or, as Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in another context: “The usual objection that empirical social research is too mechanical, too crude, and too unspiritual [ungeistig] shifts the responsibility from that which science is investigating to science itself.” … The idealistic misconception of … behavioral methods … shifts the evil from the social conditions that coerce men and women into standardized roles onto the social science that is merely registering these conditions.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 69

Women, Men, Behavior, Reality

“The mirrors in the room go black and blue”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Cold Roses
29 (2005)

“.. I need to immerse my gaze in your eyes, it is in their mirror that I see myself as I would like to be, and it is only in seeing myself as I feel I should be. I think, therefore I am, my Beautiful One, to both of us, every day we recreate the world, every day a paradise falls in our hands, to darken in the dust of many paradises... The paradises will fall in our hands, will sink in the dust and will be born again according to our will.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

World, Beauty, Feeling, Thinking

“And the sad part is that you actually believe in The Undertaker. You actually believe that he has all these magic powers which is really alll just smoke and mirrors.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Friday Night SmackDown

Sadness, Parting

“Here the reason
no less than all separate acts
Must give way,
For our powers become simple in Love;
They are silent
And In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image. The sight of the simple eye is a living mirror bowed down in the Presence of the Father.
And this revelation of the Father
Lifts the soul above the reason
Into the Imageless Nudity.
There the soul is simple, pure, spotless,
Empty of all things;
And it is in this state of perfect emptiness
That the Father manifests His Divine radiance.
To this radiance neither reason nor sense,
Observation nor distinction,
Can attain.
All this must stay below;
For the measureless radiance
Blinds the eyes of the reason,
They cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
But above the reason,
In the most secret part of the understanding,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness

Love, God, Secret, Way

“True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Epipsychidion (1821)

Love, Truth, Error, Imagination

“I am going to do some drawings or paintings…in the mirror of my wardrobe.. with myself as a figure doing something.”

Gwen John (1876–1939) Welsh painter

Letter to Rodin (circa 1905)

Drawing, Painting

“The cosmos exploded, actualizing its potentiality of space and time. The centers of power, like fragments of a bursting bomb, were hurled apart. But each one retained in itself, as a memory and a longing, the single spirit of the whole; and each mirrored in itself aspects of all the others throughout all the cosmical space and time.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 162)

Memory, Time

“The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

Bruce Springsteen Talking

“I'll be sitting in your mirror.
Now is the place where the crossroads meet.
Will you look into the future?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Future

“The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Afterword to "The Bagful of Dreams" in The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). First appeared in Epoch (1775), ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood.

“The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plough, the question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"All the World is Green", Blood Money (2002).

Forgiveness, Question

“… Assad’s survival—if Saddam Hussein’s murderous rampage in 1991 is any indication—will without a shadow of a doubt translate into hundreds of thousands of Syrian dead, mostly butchered after his victory has been assured. The comparison comes to mind because the two Ba’thi regimes of Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad bear an unmistakable resemblance—they are mirror images of one another, one might say. Both are minority dominated, single party regimes originating in the same quasi-fascist pan-Arab ideology built on the principle that any form of disagreement is an act of “betrayal” to the “revolution.””

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Intervention In Syria is a Moral and Human Imperative", New Republican (February 24, 2012)

Betrayal, Victory, Dead

“MIRRORMENT
Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.”

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

Flowers, Bird, Flying

“What had he been taught? For the social good, you must be your own policeman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crime which might conceivably be yours.
The face of the informer stared impassively at him. It was Barrent’s own face, reflected back from a mirror on the wall.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 29 (p. 123)

“Like the surface of the sea was the mirror of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun's slanting beams, in the darkness of the stars, where no eye can pierce her deeps; vast and mystic as the sea when the sun smites her in such way that the watcher's breath is caught at the glimpse of tremendous abysses. So was the mirror in which Kull gazed.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" (1929)

Way, Star, Sun, Sea

“I have a feeling that you despise your body and that you only value art, you only value your argent needs, but eating and sleeping aren’t enough. You believe that your appearance is your enemy, and the only friend you have is music. Why look just in the mirror, look at your reflection, you’ll never find a better friend that yourself.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 65
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Art, Music, Feeling, Sleep

“I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“The show is called 'Wind'. I tried here to make work which looks like wind, and it is the most difficult thing to do; I was thinking of Leonardo da Vinci – as he was, for instance, always wanting to fly. And then, this hand of Michael Jackson is like 'ffffffff', 'I'm leaving' (makes gesture with her hand and mouth in the mirror in the hallway of the gallery, mimicking the action that Jackson is depicted making on the invitation card of her show - Simon Denny). Not in a sad way, but…. in a way a little bit sad too. And then I said 'Isa Genzken', because I always liked him so much. For instance, I would always have jackets like this one. This is my favourite kind of style, and so I said 'ffff' [blowing gesture] 'Now I'm coming'… It's like 'don't be afraid, don't be sad, you know… I'm here.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Sadness, Way, Thinking, Flying

“And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France]... Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me.... my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer.... at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it’s all over. Why live? I light the candle – my huge shadow springs across half the wall, clear up to the ceiling and in the mirror over the fireplace I see the face of my own ghost.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

a note from Saint Cloud, 1898; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 115
1896 - 1930

Spring, Sister, Laughter, Light

“Upon leaving [the derivatives business], our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: "I liked you better before I got to know you so well."”

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

2008 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Feeling, Business, Country

“Pure and undimmed, thy angel smile
Is mirrored on my dreams,
Like evening's sunset-girded isle
Upon her shadowed streams:
And o'er my thoughts thy vision floats,
Like melody of spring-bird, notes;
When the blue halcyon gently laves
His plumage in the flashing waves.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

To a young girl.

Smile, Dreams, Angels, Spring

“There is a month, a year, there is a time
In which majesty is a mirror of the self:
I have not but I am and as I am, I am.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

Time

“The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Gray
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Top Gear, 2 November 2008; as quoted in "Clarkson joke sparks complaints" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7707641.stm, BBC News, 4 November 2008 <br class="br">Top Gear

Effort, Change

“THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
But lonely all, as if she pined
For somewhat of companionship,
And felt it was in vain she shined:
Earth is her mirror, and the stars
Are as the court around her throne;
She is a beauty and a queen;
But what is this? she is alone.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Moon from The London Literary Gazette (25th March 1826)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Star

“The world is a mirror representing the divine life…”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

with A., Kushiner, James M., (editors),[2001, Signs of intelligence: understanding intelligent design, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1587430045, [BL263.S54, 2001], 00067612]
2000s

Life, World

“Throughout our lives, we see in the mirror the same innocent trusting face we have seen there since childhood.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Childhood

“In the evening I study a fair.... if you could see the pomp and luxury of the merry-go-round and the stands and booths. Everything is decorated in Baroque-style, all gold and silver; there are mirrors, fabrics, and electric lightning. By night the whole thing is fantastic and rowdy. First of all I shall make a small picture and some drawings for illustrations.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote c. 1900, in: Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1951), ed. Fagiolo dell'Arco, exh. catalogue, Galleria Nationale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, 1971 <br class="br">Balla studied a fair for his later painting ' Luna park in Paris https://www.wikiart.org/en/giacomo-balla/luna-park-par-s-1900,' he painted in 1900

Study, Drawing, Night