Contemplation Quotes - Page 15

• As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others' agony something bearable, supportable- something as we say, sufferable.

  Clifford Geertz

  Strength, Religious, Pain

  Clifford Geertz (2017). “The Interpretation of Cultures”, p.111, Hachette UK

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• ... I have developed, over the years, some sense of the difference between real horseshit that you can step in and Ideal Platonic Horseshit that exists, evidently, only in the contemplation of those who worship such abstractions; and I continue to notice that Natural Law bears an uncanny resemblance to ideal Platonic Horseshit.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Real, Years, Law

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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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• Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience - the union of life and peace.

  George Santayana

  Life, Art, Peace

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2015). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four”, p.107, MIT Press

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• Virtue could see to do what virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse Contemplation She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun.

  John Milton

  Sweet, Dark, Moon

  'Comus' (1637) l. 373

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• Christianity sees plants and flowers as created by God to show forth and share with humans the divine goodness, beauty and truth - the purpose of all Creation. In this flowers may be enjoyed simply and directly in themselves as showing forth God's goodness and beauty, or, more fully, as archetypes, signatures, symbols, and bearers of legends, mirroring the revealed articles of Christian faith - thereby serving as means for their teaching, recollection, contemplation and celebration.

  John Stokes

  Beauty, Christian, Truth

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• Banish, therefore, from thy heart the distractions of earth and turn thine eyes to spiritual joys, that thou mayest learn at last to repose in the light of the contemplation of God.

  Albertus Magnus

  Spiritual, Eye, Heart

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• Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.

  Thomas Merton

  Spring, Catholic, Action

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.73, Shambhala Publications

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• A person may rise to the highest degree of contemplation even when busily occupied.

  Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

  Degrees, Mindfulness, May

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• The landscape affects the human psyche - the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations - like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Music, Soul, Balance

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• MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Animal, Men, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.161, University of Georgia Press

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• It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. 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.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hands, Giving

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.207, North Point Press

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• Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.

  Theodor Adorno

  Writing, Self, Long

  "Cultural Criticism and Society". Essay by Theodor Adorno (1949), reprinted in his book "Prisms", 1967.

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• Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

  Madame de Stael

  Genius, Form, Wit

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• I don't wish to defend everything that has been done in the name of Utopia. But I think many of the attacks misconceive its nature and function. As I have tried to suggest, utopia is not mainly about providing detailed blueprints for social reconstruction. Its concern with ends is about making us think about possible worlds. It is about inventing and imagining worlds for our contemplation and delight. It opens up our minds to the possibilities of the human condition.

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger

  Thinking, Names, Mind

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• Art is contemplation of the world in a state of grace and imaginatively reflecting that subjective understanding.

  Hermann Hesse

  Art, Grace, Understanding

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• The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.

  Josef Pieper

  Philosophy, Desire, Causes

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• Having once aroused in our mind enough faith in our own will-power to create a universe of contemplation and forget everything else, there are few limitations to the happiness we may enjoy.

  John Cowper Powys

  Forget Everything, Mind, May

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• Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life.

  John Cowper Powys

  Machines, Preacher, Notion

  John Cowper Powys (1930). “In defence of sensuality”

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• In creating a work of art, the psyche or soul of the artist ascends from the earthly realm into the heavenly. There, free of all images, the soul is fed in contemplation by the essences of the highest realm, knowing the permanent noumena of things. Then, satiated with this knowing, it descends again to the earthly realm. And precisely at the boundary between the two worlds, the soul’s spiritual knowledge assumes the shapes of symbolic imagery: and it is these images that make permanent the work of art. Art is thus materialized dream, separated from the ordinary consciousness of waking life.

  Pavel Florensky

  Dream, Spiritual, Art

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• Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

  Thomas Merton

  Eternity, This Life

  Thomas Merton (1997). “Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage”, HarperOne

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• Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Sublime, Action

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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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