Contemplation Quotes - Page 13

• There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the first only the best will do, for the rest - then one can let in anything one would like to read in the world.

  Mary Butts

  Book, Reading, Two

  Mary Butts (2008). “The Journals of Mary Butts”, p.30, Yale University Press

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• At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Doubt, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (2003). “Selected Essays”, p.380, Penguin UK

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• A minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendor which dazzles the imagination. Whatsoever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill; all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Luxury, Imagination

  Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, James Boswell (1804). “The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd”

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• In no way have we contemplated the intervention of the army in tasks that belong to police at the different levels of government. What is contemplated .. is support from the army in these tasks but not in direct actions that correspond to municipal, state and federal police.

  Ruben Aguilar

  Army, Direct Action, Government

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• The activity of God, which is transcendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation; and therefore among human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness.

  Aristotle

  Happiness, Divine, Source

  Aristotle (1934). “The Nicomachean ethics”

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• I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Entertainment, Fiction, Want

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• Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.

  Aldous Huxley

  Soul, Divine, Lays

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• I must pack my short lifer full of interesting events and creative activity. Philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. I intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development. Then, and before physical deterioration obtrudes, I shall go on some last wilderness trip to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return.

  Everett Ruess

  Philosophy, Short Life, Interesting

  Everett Ruess (1983). “Everett Ruess, a vagabond for beauty”

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• Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots, and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them - all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration.

  Muriel Barbery

  Inspiration, People, Giving

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, September 2008.

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• There are two Italies.... The one is the most sublime and lovely contemplation that can be conceived by the imagination of man; the other is the most degraded, disgusting, and odious. What do you think? Young women of rank actually eat - you will never guess what - garlick! Our poor friend Lord Byron is quite corrupted by living among these people, and in fact, is going on in a way not worthy of him.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Food, Men, Thinking

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• No person whose entire time is spent in the contemplation of limitation can demonstrate freedom from such limitation.

  Ernest Holmes

  Belief, Persons, Limitation

  Ernest Holmes (1998). “The Science of Mind: The Definitive Edition”, p.267, Penguin

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• There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one's self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world's opinion comes from consulting one's own personal convenience.

  Marie Corelli

  Depressing, Self, World

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• To contemplation's sober eye,
  Such is the race of man;
  And they that creep, and they that fly,
  Shall end where they began,
  Alike the busy and the gay,
  But flutter through life's little day.

  Thomas Gray

  Eye, Gay, Men

  John Milton, Edward Young, Thomas Gray, James Beattie, William Collins (1836). “The Poetical Works of Milton, Young, Gray, Beattie, and Collins”, p.251

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• Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.

  Thomas Merton

  Truth, Intuition, Sake

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.49, Sounds True

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• What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.

  Victor Hugo

  Beautiful, Stars, Flower

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• You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, New York, Feet

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplation of the moon, sailing, like some planetary bark, amidst a sea of bright azure. The subject is certainly hackneyed; the moon has been sung by poet and poetaster. Is there any marvel that it should be so?

  William Gilmore Simms

  Moon, Sea, Sailing

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• How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Intellectual, Important

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.66, Yale University Press

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• Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self-inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

  Deepak Chopra

  Philosophy, Creativity, Reflection

  "Exclusive: Deepak Chopra Explores the Evolution of God". Interview with Dan Schawbel, www.forbes.com. September 25, 2012.

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• What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Precious Stones, Vices, May

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.210

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• In the martial arts, introspection begets wisdom. Always see contemplation on your actions as an opportunity to improve.

  Mas Oyama

  Art, Opportunity, Action

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• the most deeply moving element in the contemplation of beauty is the element of loss. We desire to hold; but the sunset melts into the night, and the secret of the painting on the wall can never be the secret of the buyer.

  Pamela Hansford Johnson

  Beauty, Wall, Moving

  Pamela Hansford Johnson (1952). “Catherine Carter: A Novel”, London Macmillan 1952.

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• Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination,--proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,--no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth.

  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

  Voice, Soul, Emotion

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• I am suggesting that we can and do regain eternity when we are so immersed in life, in moral action, or in aesthetic contemplation, that we completely forget about time and anxiety.

  Don Cupitt

  Anxiety, Action, Moral

  Don Cupitt (2010). “Theology's Strange Return”, p.5, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.

  Iain Pears

  Philosophy, Exercise, Virtue

  "The Dream of Scipio". Book by Iain Pears, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2002.

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