Mirrors Quotes

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face--there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”
― Jean Cocteau

“People who live in society have learnt 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, Nausea

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

“If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“ONE BUT MANY

One God, many faces.
One family, many races.
One truth, many paths.
One heart, many complexions.
One light, many reflections.
One world, many imperfections.
ONE.
We are all one,
But many.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher.

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”
― Rudine Sims Bishop

“But what does a mirror know? What can it show us of ourselves? Oh, it might reveal a few scars, and perhaps a glimpse—there, in the eyes—of our true nature. The spirit beneath the skin. Yet the deepest scars are often hidden, and though a mirror might reveal our weakness, it reflects only a fraction of our strength.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“Asking me to just be myself is like asking a mirror to stop changing every time someone different looks at it.”

Q”
― Frank Lambert, Cult of the Clan

“Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees”
― Dee Remy, There Once Was A Boy

“You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A bloody pulpy liquid mess. Look at it, try to make sense of it. Realize you can't. Because there is no sense. Ask your computer to print out a list of every lie you have ever told. Ask yourself how much of the universe you have ever really seen. Look in the mirror. Are you sure you're you? Are you sure you didn't slip out of yourself in the middle of the night, and someone else slipped into you, without you or you or any of you even noticing?”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“I didn’t want any new clothes at all; because if I had to look ugly anyway, I wanted to at least be comfortable. I let the awful clothes affect even my posture, walked around with my back bowed, my shoulders drooping, my hands and arms all over the place. I was afraid of mirrors, because they showed an inescapable ugliness.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“Since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.”
― Jonathan Franzen

“Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors.”
― Tarjei Vesaas, The Boat in the Evening

“My love,
you are driving the entire world mad.
The nightingales are committing suicide
one by one out of jealousy of your voice.
The roses took one glance at your beauty
and folded themselves from shame.
The trees now only whisper your name
and the sky hasn’t stopped crying since you looked up.
Have pity on us, my love.
We have already broken all the mirrors and glass
out of fear that you will forget us
and fall in love with yourself
once you see what we all
cannot stop seeing.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“That mirror, that's one I hate to let go, he said. That was my daughter's the whole time she was growing up. It probably seen her more than me--everything from a baby up to twenty years old. Sometimes I wonder if all that might still be inside it. Got to make an impression on a thing, reflecting the same person every day.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words. Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective reality that comprise the physical universe, social communities, political dynamics, and other facets of human existence. Looking in certain other corners of the same mirror, he or she may experience glimpses of a True Self sheltered deftly behind a mask of public proprieties.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“Madness plants mirrors in the desert. I find the means frightening.”
― Floriano Martins

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

“The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's.
Hmmmmm.
Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in.
Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect?”
― Lisi Harrison, Monster High

“The world is full of fools, and he who would not see it should live alone and smash his mirror.”
― Claude Le Petit

“I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life. Such a number of looking-glasses! Oh Lord! There is not getting away from one's self”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Inner beauty is never found in the mirror.”
― Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love

“The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God’s many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I have always found there to be a certain sadness about mirrors, since they double the space in a house which needs to be filled with love.”
― Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd