Mirror

A mirror is an object or surface which reflects light or sound in ways which preserve much of its original quality subsequent to its contact with the mirror. The term is also used metaphorically in relation to anything which reveals aspects of an observer.

A

I love being a beautiful woman when I look at myself in the mirror.
- Layal Abboud, June 15, 2017; Al Kahera Walnas

Omnis mundi creatura
Quasi liber et pictura
Nobis est, et speculum.
- All creation,
  like a book or a picture,
  is a mirror to us.
  - Alain de Lille, in De Incarnatione Christi (c. 1170)

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside.
- Attar, in The Conference of the Birds (1177)

Mirrors
are the perfect lovers.
- Margaret Atwood, in You are Happy (1974), 'Tricks with Mirrors'

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
- Margaret Atwood, in Two-Headed Poems (1978), 'Marrying the Hangman'

B

I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.
- J. G. Ballard, on the reasons why he wrote Crash, as quoted in "From Wales, A World Apart" by Jeff Miers in Buffalo News (7 January 2005); also in "The Body Horrific : Cronenberg Classics at the IFC Center" by David Sharko at Tribeca Film (17 February 2009)
- Unsourced variant: "I wanted to rub humanity's face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror."

Le Dandy doit aspirer à être sublime, sans interruption. Il doit vivre et dormir devant un miroir.
- The dandy should try to be sublime without interruption. He should live and sleep before a mirror.
  - Charles Baudelaire, in Mon cœur mis à nu (1887)

I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts.
- L. Frank Baum, in Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John (1911) published under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne

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 men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.
- Ingmar Bergman, in The Seventh Seal (1957)

LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
- Jorge Luis Borges, in "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)
- Variant translation: Mirrors and copulation are obscene, for they increase the numbers of mankind.

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.
- Jorge Luis Borges, in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940), First lines

One of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.
- Jorge Luis Borges, in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
- Variant translation: 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.

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.
- Bertolt Brecht, in A Short Organum for the Theatre (1949), ¶ 73

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
- Richard Francis Burton, in The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), VI

C

Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.
- James Branch Cabell, in The Certain Hour (1916)

D

I never entertained the dreadful thought that my face was anything other than good and fair until, in an act of revelation, I picked up a mirror.
- Dafydd ap Gwilym, in "Y Drych" [The Mirror], line 1; translation from Bards and Heroes (1989) by Carl Lofmark, p. 96

Blue, round, miserable moon, full of magic, picture that draws like a magnet, pale-coloured, charmed jewel, made by sorcerers; swiftest of dreams, cold traitor, brother to the ice, most evil and unkind of servants, let hell consume the hateful, thin, bent-lipped mirror!
- Dafydd ap Gwilym, in "Y Drych" [The Mirror], line 1; translation from Bards and Heroes (1989) by Carl Lofmark, p. 96

Complex mirror reflections like this had no precedent in nature, hadn’t existed for the eye and brain to adapt to in the evolution equation. Perhaps mirrors were the most profound, the most dangerous, the very worst human invention. They suborned the integrity of the mind, couldn’t do otherwise. We were never meant to have mirrors more elaborate than calm pools, clear ice walls, lightning-fused sand-glass, and sandstorm-scoured sheets of metal, of mica, dishes of water, blocks of obsidian, screens of iron pyrites, or oddities like Dr. Dee’s lump of polished coal.
- Terry Dowling, One Thing about the Night (2003). Originally published in The Dark: New Ghost Stories. Reprinted in David G. Hartwell (ed.), Year’s Best Fantasy 4 (p. 183)

E

Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. … You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.
- Enya, as quoted in "Everyone thinks I'm so shockable", an interview with Neil McCormick in The Telegraph (24 November 2005)

F

G

Never trust mirrors. They are vain and want everyone to look at them. They commit prestidigitation on a daily basis, engulfing entire rooms and holding them captive within a quarter-inch-thick pane of silvered glass. They pull off the impossible, and aren't even humble enough to be flattering with their reflections.
- Sharmon Michelle Gazaway, It Came With Violets

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, in Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

H

Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice and she said: "We are all just prisoners here; of our own device."
- Don Henley, "Hotel California" (1976), Hotel California, Asylum Records

I

J

At the exact moment that the glass lens was allowing us to extend our vision to the stars or microscopic cells, glass mirrors were allowing us to see ourselves for the first time. It set in motion a reorientation of society that was more subtle, but no less transformative, than the reorientation of our own place in the universe that the telescope engendered. ‘The most powerful prince in the world created a vast hall of mirrors, and the mirror spread from one room to another in the bourgeois household.’ Lewis Mumford writes in his Technics and Civilization, ‘Self-consciousness, introspection, mirror-conversation developed with the new object itself.’ Social conventions as well as property rights and other legal customs began to revolve around the individual rather than the older, more collective units: the family, the tribe, the city, the kingdom. People began writing about their interior lives with far more scrutiny. Hamlet ruminated onstage, the novel emerged as a dominant form of storytelling, probing the inner mental lives of its characters with an unrivaled depth. Entering a novel, particularly a first-person narrative, was a kind of conceptual parlor trick: it let you swim through the consciousness, the thoughts and emotions, of other people more effectively than any aesthetic form yet invented. The psychological novel, in a sense, is the kind of story you start wanting to hear once you begin spending meaningful hours looking at yourself in the mirror.
- Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Inventions that Made the Modern World (2014), pp. 28-29

K

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself — your own thinking coming back at you.
- Byron Katie, in Loving What Is : Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

L

Il accusait toujours les miroirs d'être faux.
- He was always blaming mirrors for being untrue.
  - Jean de La Fontaine, in Fables (1668), Part I, no. 11, 'L'homme et son image', as quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 574

It may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.
- Gottfried Leibniz, in La monadologie (1714) § 77

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.
- Leonardo da Vinci, in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. I, as translated by Jean Paul Richter (1888)

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
- Leonardo da Vinci, in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. I, as translated by Jean Paul Richter (1888)

The air is filled with endless images of the objects distributed in it; and all are represented in all, and all in one, and all in each, whence it happens that if two mirrors are placed in such a manner as to face each other exactly, the first will be reflected in the second and the second in the first. The first being reflected in the second takes to it the image of itself with all the images represented in it, among which is the image of the second mirror, and so, image within image, they go on to infinity in such a manner as that each mirror has within it a mirror, each smaller than the last and one inside the other. Thus, by this example, it is clearly proved that every object sends its image to every spot whence the object itself can be seen; and the converse: That the same object may receive in itself all the images of the objects that are in front of it.
- Leonardo da Vinci, in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. II, as translated by Jean Paul Richter (1888)

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in Aphorisms Notebook E 49
- Variant translations of first portion: A book is a mirror: If an ape peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.
- A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out. — this has actually been the most commonly cited form, but it is based on either a loose non-literal translation or a mistranslation of the German original: Ein Buch ist Spiegel, aus dem kein Apostel herausgucken kann, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt.

A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self — in the mirror of some woman's eyes.
- Clare Boothe Luce, in The Women (1936) Act I

M

Most faithful mirror; fearless on my breath.
- Massive Attack, "Teardrop", Mezzanine (1998)

N

O

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
- Eugene O'Neill, in Lazarus Laughed (1927), ACT II, scene i

If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.
- Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) in Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic (2000), Vol. 2, Chapter 4

P

L'architecture est le miroir même de la vie. Il n'est que de jeter les yeux sur des édifices pour sentir la présence du passé, l'esprit d'un lieu; ils sont le reflet de la société.
- Architecture is the very mirror of life. You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.
  - Ieoh Ming Pei (with E. J. Biasini), in Les Grands desseins du Louvre (1989), as quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 764

Q

R

Universe is an empty mirror. Life is just the reflection of your deep thoughts.
- Amit Ray in Enlightenment Step by Step (2016)

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors — the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.
- Gregory David Roberts, in Shantaram (2003)

The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror.
Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
It has no attributes,
And here all the works of Reason fail.
It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
- John Ruysbroeck, in The Twelve Beguines

He shows Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence;
Not as He is in His nature,
But in images and similitudes,
And in the degree in which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him.
And the wise reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly
And without error in images of the understanding
All that she has heard of God,
Of faith, of truth, according to her longing.
- John Ruysbroeck, in The Twelve Beguines

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, in "A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness " as translated in Ruysbroeck (1915) by Evelyn Underhill

In this return in love in the divine ground every divine way and activity and all the attributes of the persons are swallowed up in the rich compass of the essential unity. All the divine means and all conditions, and all living images which are reflected in the mirror of truth, lapse in the onefold and ineffable waylessness beyond reason. Here there is nothing but eternal rest in the fruitive embrace of outpouring love.
- John Ruysbroeck, quoted in Gnostic Society Library, From the Western Mystical tradition [1]

S

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.
- George Bernard Shaw, in Back to Methuselah (1921), The She-Ancient, in Pt. V

Each day the vain Queen consulted her Magic Mirror, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"… and as long as the Mirror answered, "You are the fairest of them all," Snow White was safe from the Queen's cruel jealousy.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.
- Stendhal, in Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830) Vol. II, Ch. XIX

T

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 resconstruct 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, 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.
  - Apparently derived from Trotsky's observations, or the remarks 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.

U

V

W

The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plough, the question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?
- Tom Waits, in "All the World is Green", on Blood Money (2002)

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

X

Y

Z

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