Date: 1913

"But there was a twist in his brain which made his pictures of real life appear like scenes looked at through flawed glass."

— Gosse, Edmund (1849-1928)

Date: 1925

"A man of action is likely to be a poor thinker, if a thinker at all, while the ideal of the sage, the stoic for instance, is to live detached and to keep his soul motionless like a still lake which impassively mirrors the fleeting skies."

— Ortega y Gasset, José (1883-1955)

Date: 1927

"The way in which the self is unveiled to itself in the factical Dasein can nevertheless be fittingly called reflection, except that we must not take this expression to mean what is commonly meant by it--the ego bent around backward and staring at itself--but an interconnection such as is manifes...

— Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976)

Date: 1949

"Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from a mirror in its own insides."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1979

"The picture which holds traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as a great mirror, containing various representations--some accurate, some not--and capable of being studied by pure, non-empirical methods."

— Rorty, Richard (1931-2007)

Date: 1992

"What we see when we take this inner look will be partly determined by the philosophical viewpoint from which we look, or, we might say, by the conceptual spectacles we may be wearing."

— Kenny, Anthony (b. 1931)