Richard M. Weaver Quotes

An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.

My works were designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify and inspire reflection.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite.

The past always sort of haunts us and perhaps inspires us in some ways.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

Most persons who indulge in second thought don't do much thinking when the subject is presented for first thought.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.

Something that I tell myself every morning when I wake up is like: "Think it over, take the time to think it over." I don't like spontaneity, there you go. I'm wary of it.

It is necessary for a Senator to be thoroughly acquainted with the constitution; and this is a knowledge of the most extensive nature; a matter of science, of diligence, of reflection, without which no Senator can possibly be fit for his office.

Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.

What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

Maybe you've had the experience where somebody's asked you a question and you give an answer, then later in the day you think, "Oh, I wish I'd said that!" I tend to journal these things and put the answers in sermons.

I felt like I had experienced a lot of things in the first chapter of my life, and I wanted it to inspire and motivate people, so I just started writing.

The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.

Aristotle once said that wisdom (the ability to make good decisions) is a combination of experience plus reflection. The more time that you take to think about your experiences, the more vital lessons you will gain from them.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.

Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.

Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.

When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective... reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes.