Contemplation Quotes

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  That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beauty, Beautiful, Intense

  Edgar Allan Poe, Gary Richard Thompson (1984). “Essays and Reviews”, p.78, Library of America

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  What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

  Meister Eckhart

  Excellence, Soil, Action

  Meister Eckhart, Raymond Bernard Blakney (1941). “Celebrated 14th Century Mystic and Scholastic Meister Eckhart”

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• Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Inspiring, Meditation, Quiet

  Marian Wright Edelman (2013). “The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours”, p.61, Beacon Press

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  Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Inspiring, Travel, Thinking

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• The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

  Aristotle

  Life, Philosophical, Survival

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• The contemplation of beauty causes the soul to grow wings.

  Plato

  Beauty, Wings, Soul

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• Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Gratitude, Realization

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.1, New Directions Publishing

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  I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease the tension and think about what's going to happen next.

  Sarah McLachlan

  Inspirational, Thinking, Hot

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• What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.

  Meister Eckhart

  Love, Men

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• The first great thing is to find yourself and for that you need solitude and contemplation - at least sometimes. I can tell you deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.

  Fridtjof Nansen

  Lonely, Civilization, Rushing

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• Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Powerful, Thoughtful, Love Is

  "Summa Theologica". Book by Thomas Aquinas (Part II-II, Question 188), 1485.

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• It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.

  Rachel Carson

  Beauty, Nature, Humility

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• There is no art without contemplation.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Contemplating

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• It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

  Carl Sandburg

  Inspirational, Reflection, Men

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• 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 disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that - stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God's presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is.

  Jim Wallis

  Prayer, Break Through, Discipline

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• Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

  Auguste Rodin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Art

  Auguste Rodin (2012). “Rodin on Art and Artists”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• Contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then, of course, something must be done. Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within…. We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Children, Heart, Self

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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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• 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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• If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Art, Sri Lanka, Meditation

  Sri Chinmoy (2015). “Beyond Within: A Philosophy for the Inner Life”, p.234, Aum Publications

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

  Gabriel Marcel

  Wise, Running, Men

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• True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Clever, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Contemplative Prayer”, p.70, Image

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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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