Quotes about Reflection

Here's the next section of quotes from my book 1000 Great Quotations for Business, Management & Training.


An updated version of the book is newly available as part of my Almost Free Kindle titles both in the UK and in the USA.

To do great work, a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.

Samuel Butler, British author (1835-1902)

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Edward Gibbon, British historian (1737-1794)

Some days you must learn a great deal, but you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle round inside of you.

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg, US author (b. 1930)

Sit in reverie and watch the changing colour of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet (1807-1882)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is generally recognised that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the standard, and generate a leap into the new.

Nathaniel Branden, US psychologist, author (b. 1930)

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

Robert Heinlein, US author (1907-1988)

Allow regular time for silent reflection. Turn inward and digest what has happened. Let the senses rest and grow still.

John Heider, US management author (1936-2010)

Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.

Erik Satie, French composer (1866-1925)

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

John Russell Lowell, US poet, critic, statesman (1819-1891)

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister (1917-1984)

It would do the world good if every man would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world’s progress has come out of such loneliness.

Bruce Barton, US author, advertising executive (1886-1967)

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together, that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life.

Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese philosopher, author, poet (1883-1931)

Don’t just do it, stand there!

David Williams, British author, presenter (b. 1950)

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, analytical psychologist (1876-1961)