Contemplation Quotes - Page 8

• How often do we talk just to fill up the quiet space? How often do we waste our breath talking about nonsense?

  Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

  Talking, Space, Waste

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• Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.

  Mother Teresa

  Heart, Water, Grace

  Mother Teresa (1985). “Mother Teresa: Contemplative in the Heart of the World”

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• Suddenness," he says. " You do not prepare, you do not explain, you do not apologize. Suddenly, you go. And with you, you take all contemplation, all consideration of your own departure. All the suffering that would have come from knowing comes after you are gone, and you are not a part of it.

  Tea Obreht

  Knowing, Suffering, Gone

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• Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.81, Cosimo, Inc.

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• God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and contemplation.

  Charles Brent

  Prayer, Profound, Silence

  Charles Henry Brent (1914). “With God in the World: A Series of Papers”

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• Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

  Henri Nouwen

  Christian, Real, Godly

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• I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

  William Shakespeare

  Nice, Humorous, Sadness

  William Shakespeare (2012). “Comedies of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)”, p.747, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Contemplation does not ignore the 'historical Gethsemane', does not ignore the mystery of evil, guilt and its bloody atonement. The happiness of contemplation is a true happiness, indeed the supreme happiness; but it is founded upon sorrow.

  Josef Pieper

  Evil, Historical, Sorrow

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• Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Father, Mean

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• Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.

  Alice Sebold

  Swings, Land, Rope

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• The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but "the true saint" goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.

  Abu-Sa'id Abul-Khayr

  God, Spiritual, Single Mom

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• It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness: cut out the support, and beauty will sink from sight.

  John Steinbeck

  Cutting, Sight, Support

  John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.59, Penguin

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• It is not necessary to maintain a conversation when we are in the presence of God. We can come into His presence and rest our weary souls in quiet contemplation of Him. Our groanings, which cannot be uttered, rise to Him and tell Him better than words how dependent we are upon Him.

  Ole Hallesby

  Prayer, Soul, Quiet

  Ole Hallesby (1975). “Prayer”, Augsburg Fortress Publishing

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• The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

  Kathleen Norris

  Ordinary, Baking, Bread

  Kathleen Norris (1998). “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and "women's Work"”, p.15, Paulist Press

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• I have often thought with wonder of the great goodness of God; and my soul has rejoiced in the contemplation of His great magnificence and mercy. May He be blessed for ever! For I see clearly that He has not omitted to reward me, even in this life, for every one of my good desires.

  Teresa of Avila

  Blessed, Soul, Desire

  St Teresa of Avila (2008). “The Life of St. Teresa of Avila”, p.20, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

  Jane Smiley

  Horse, Generosity, Example

  "Everything I need to know I learned from a horse" by Jane Smiley, www.cnn.com. September 5, 2011.

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• Historically, China is not a nation of sportsmen. We traditionally put more emphasis on being close to nature than pushing endlessly to excel. A philosophy that values tranquil contemplation of the landscape cannot easily be adapted to the Olympic slogan of 'higher, stronger, faster.'

  Ai Weiwei

  Philosophy, Stronger, Landscape

  "Gold Is Not the Real Measure of a Nation". www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2008.

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• Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Dream, Night, Ideas

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.4, Booklassic

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• But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Grief, Joy, Soul

  Leo Tolstoy (2015). “Anna Karenina”, p.932, Xist Publishing

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• But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

  Kate Chopin

  Sea, Voice, Seductive

  1899 The Awakening, ch.6.

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• If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Wisdom, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.7, Hayes Barton Press

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• Woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath forever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Suicide, Believe, Suicidal

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• But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness.

  William Shakespeare

  Humorous, Sadness, Rumination

  William Shakespeare (2001). “As You Like It”, p.211, Classic Books Company

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• Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all - consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise - the traffic in the head. So many thoughts - trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

  Rajneesh

  Crazy, Airplane, Thinking

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• To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

  George Santayana

  Imagination, Vivid, Taste

  George Santayana (2004). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.11, Cosimo, Inc.

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