Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

The best mirror is an old friend.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

MIRROR PIECE

Instead of obtaining a mirror, obtain a person.
Look into him.
Use different people.
Old, young, fat, small, etc.

1964 spring

The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address.
Even the clearest water,
if deep enough can drown.
Never think to surprise them.
Your face approaching ever
so friendly is the white flag
they ignore. There is no truce

with the furies. A mirror’s temperature
is always at zero. It is ice
in the veins. Its camera
is an X — ray. It is a chalice

held out to you in
silent communion, where gaspingly
you partake of a shifting
identity never your own.

Why on earth do you carry a mirror around with you?”
“It's purely a defensive device. We seldom quarrel, and this is one of the reasons. Can you imagine yourself getting all worked up and contorted and illogical and then coming face to face with yourself, looking at yourself exactly as you look to everyone else?

The summary of the advice of all prophets is this;
Find yourself a mirror.

"If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?"

He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often — he searched for a simile, found one in his work — torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?

At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

G. C. Lichtenberg said a book is like a mirror: If a jerk looks in, a jerk looks out.