Contemplation Quotes - Page 6

• One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.

  Victor Hugo

  Work, Eye, Thinking

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

  Simone Weil

  Philosophy, Science, Years

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.335, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

  Tryon Edwards

  Way, Digestion

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.239, Ravenio Books

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• For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Men, Lasts, Faces

  The Great Gatsby ch. 9 (1925)

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• The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

  William Penn

  Country, Men, Cities

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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• To Time it never seems that he is brave
  To set himself against the peaks of snow
  To lay them level with the running wave,
  Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
  But only grave, contemplative and grave.

  Robert Frost

  Running, Lying, Snow

  Robert Frost (1963). “Selected poems”

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• The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

  T. S. Eliot

  Ignorance, Ideas, Silence

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

  Lewis Mumford

  Beauty, Truth, Sight

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• The initial step for us all to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Knowledge Of God, Steps, Creation

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• Meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Real

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature”, p.53, Advaita Ashrama

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• Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

  Richard Rohr

  Opposites, Addiction, Alternatives

  "Contemplation: Finding Ourselves, Finding God" by Richard Rohr, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 13, 2011.

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• Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.

  William L. Shirer

  Happiness, Reflection, Self

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• The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.

  Gabriel Marcel

  Wise, Running, Men

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• The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Sunset, Past

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov”, p.97, Vintage

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• All the sleepers in a night of delution beholding so many dreams. In this world of darkness, only those who sever themselves from the meterial world, become absorbed in the contemplation of the supreme. None can be regarded as really woken up from sleep till they have renounced all sensuous delights.

  Tulsidas

  Dream, Sleep, Night

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• Each human being was given two possibilities: action and contemplation. Both lead to the same place.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Two, Acting

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• I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.

  Richard Rohr

  Teaching, Years, Lasts

  "Richard Rohr: Off the Road and On to the Living School". Interview with Jamie L. Manson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 3, 2013.

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• In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life - a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it's like breathing in and breathing out. And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation. One without the other leads to a kind of madness.

  Pico Iyer

  Motivational, Self, Breathing

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• Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms. Martha and Mary are sisters.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  House, Catholic, Together

  Saint Bernard (of Clairvaux) (1952). “Saint Bernard on the Song of songs: Sermones in Cantica canticorum”

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• The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation (...)The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Atheism, World

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• The wider our contemplation of creation, the grander is our conception of God.

  Cyril of Jerusalem

  Creation, Conception

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• Realizing your goal, resolution, or transformation is a journey. Change, like any meaningful endeavor, proceeds sequentially through steps. The journey begins with the contemplation stage of specifying realistic goals, getting ready, or getting psyched. The planning stage is all about prepping. How exactly will I do this thing? At some point you will jump from preparing and planning to perspiring, the work of implementing the new, desired behavior. Getting there is wonderful, but we need to keep you there, which entails persevering through slips and, finally, persisting over time.

  John C. Norcross

  Meaningful, Journey, Goal

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• The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's study or a contemplative cell. It is a body of oral messages, announcements, prophecies, promulgations, recitals, histories, songs of praise, lamentations, etc., which are meant either to be uttered or at least read aloud, or chanted, or sung, or recited in a community convoked for the purpose of a living celebration.

  Thomas Merton

  Song, Cells, Community

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• Contemplation is wisdom's best nurse.

  John Milton

  Nurse

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• For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

  Aristotle

  Ethics, Form, Intellect

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