Contemplating Quotes - Page 27

• Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt

  Immanuel Kant

  Beautiful, Pain, Sublime

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• The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.

  Voltaire

  Funny, Hilarious, Silly

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• In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.

  Julia Cameron

  Inspirational, Life, Pain

  Julia Cameron (2012). “The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”, p.82, Souvenir Press

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• No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?” Dash said, “I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I’m even here.” Mark scoffed. “You bookish little pervert.” “Thank you, sir!” Dash said brightly.

  David Levithan

  Ideas, Tonight, Littles

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• In the business world, what’s the female equivalent of going golfing with a client?” Laney gave this some thought. Payton fell silent, too, contemplating. After a few moments, neither of them could come up with anything. How depressing. Payton sighed, feigning resignation. “Well, that’s it. I guess I’ll just have to sleep with them.” Laney folded her hands primly on the table. “I think I’m uncomfortable with this conversation.

  Julie James

  Depressing, Sleep, Thinking

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• When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Fate, Path, Ends

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• A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

  Ann Voskamp

  Blessing, Acting, Christ

  FaceBook post by Ann Voskamp from Jul 08, 2012

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• In the city fields Contemplating cherry-trees... Strangers are like friends

  Kobayashi Issa

  Cities, Tree, Fields

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• When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

  Jane Austen

  Night, People, Sorrow

  Jane Austen (2006). “Illustrated Jane Austen - 8 Books in 1. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson. Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, P”, p.328, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.

  Christopher Paolini

  Evil, Poison, Might

  Christopher Paolini (2011). “Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr Omnibus”, p.747, Random House

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• He always smiles, even when contemplating nothing good.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Always Smile

  Henryk Sienkiewicz (1912). “In Desert and Wilderness”, p.147, Library of Alexandria

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• Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Journey

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.40, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The day is made up of 24 hours and an infinite number of moments. We need to be aware of those moments and make the most of them regardless of whether we're busy doing something or contemplating life.

  Paulo Coelho

  Inspiring, Numbers, Needs

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• Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca. (The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.)

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Strong, Cheer, House

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• She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling for a long moment. A raindrop moved slowly down her neck; he watched as it turned down the slope of her breast to disappear inside the collar of her shirt. He was seriously contemplating becoming jealous of a droplet of water. Yorkshire was obviously damaging to his sanity.

  Sarah MacLean

  Jealous, Long, Water

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• I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Distance, Thinking, Sky

  Simone de Beauvoir (2011). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wise, Men, Religion

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.12, Lulu Press, Inc

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• In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute— how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.

  John Green

  Cute, Baby, Reading

  John Green, David Levithan (2010). “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, p.55, Penguin

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• Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.

  Albert Pike

  Strong, Teaching, People

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• It places value on experience versus intellectual understanding. I saw a lot of people contemplating things but it didn't seem to lead to too many places. I got very interested in people who had discovered something more significant than an intellectual, abstract understanding.

  Steve Jobs

  People, Understanding, Intellectual

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• I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity.

  Maurice Blanchot

  Mirrors, Light, Offering

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• Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.

  Boethius

  Heaven, Lasts, Admire

  Boethius (1999). “The Consolation of Philosophy”, p.52, OUP Oxford

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• When I ask people to contemplate selflessness, the sometimes react as if I've asked them to put their house on the market or give away all their money. If there was a self that existed in the way we think, discovering selflessness would be like putting our house on the market. But in the Buddhist tradition, the discovery of selflessness is called "completely joyful." It's not called "the raw end of the deal," or "I'd rather go back to bed," or "This is scary and depressing."

  Sakyong Mipham

  Depressing, Buddhist, Thinking

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• The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry's view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis.

  Ian Mcewan

  Lying, Thinking, Ideas

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Saturday”, p.17, Random House

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• The world appears very little to a soul that contemplates the greatness of God.

  Brother Lawrence

  Greatness, Soul, World

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