Contemplation Quotes - Page 25

• I do a lot of reflection. I do. I spend a lot of time in reflection and contemplation. I guess the way the old mystics used to do. I don't do meditation. That's not for me. It's not my thing.

  Caroline Myss

  Reflection, Meditation, Way

  "A Conversation with Caroline Myss". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds of contemplation that provide a valuable balance to the knee-jerk reactionary behavior of most of our newspapers and political leaders. Poets are great doubters.

  Sam Hamill

  Perfect, Leader, Political

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I felt so liberated when I first saw Charles Mee’s 'The Glory of the World' at BAM play, because for me this is the gateway to contemplation, or this is the gateway to love, or this is the gateway to faith, not sitting and reading a book by an isolated monk, god bless him. This is.

  Will Oldham

  Book, Reading, Play

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• What it does remind us is that 'God' is not to be separated from the quest for the Kingdom of God and is not and cannot be the object of any detached 'scientific' contemplation. Heidegger's critique of onto-theology is also driving a wedge between speaking of God and the aims of science - not so as to get rid of God but rather to free God from a false objectification.

  George Pattison

  Kingdoms, Objectification, Doe

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Forever, Verbs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.294, Harvard University Press

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• One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Employment, Imagine, Observation

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.148, Xist Publishing

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• Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Clouds, Sight

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.66, Harvard University Press

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• Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion,not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Country, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.60, Harvard University Press

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• The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Plato, Essence, Numbers

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• Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Mean, Selfishness, And Love

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 10), 1858.

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• Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation.

  Teresa of Avila

  Exercise, Self, Perfect

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• Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.

  Anne Desclos

  Women, Lying, Joy

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• The naive which is simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and idealistic, must be both intention and instinct. The essence of intention, in this sense, is freedom. Consciousness is far from intention. There is a certain enamoured contemplation of one's own naturalness or silliness which itself is unspeakably silly. Intention does not necessarily require a profound calculation or plan.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Beautiful, Silly, Essence

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• Nature I'll court in her sequester'd haunts,
  By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell;
  Where the pois'd lark his evening ditty chants,
  And health, and peace, and contemplation dwell.

  Tobias Smollett

  Country, Cells, Mountain

  Tobias Smollett (1806). “The Miscellaneous Works of Tobias Smollett, M. D.”, p.512

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• The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die.

  Anne Bronte

  Children, Heart, Blow

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• There is no lasting pleasure but contemplation; all others grow flat and insipid upon frequent use; and when a man hath run through a set of vanities, in the declension of his age, he knows not what to do with himself, if he cannot think; he saunters about from one dull business to another, to wear out time; and hath no reason to value Life but because he is afraid of death.

  Gilbert Burnet

  Running, Men, Thinking

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• The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.

  Seneca the Younger

  Taken, Heaven, Soul

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• the contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation

  Albert Einstein

  World, This World, Liberation

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.340, Running Press

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• The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Luck, Men, Fishing

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.459, Simon and Schuster

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• Have a sense of piety ever on your mind, and be ever mindful that this is subject to no change, but will last you as long as life and support you in death. Elevate your soul by prayer and by contemplation without mystical enthusiasm.

  James Boswell

  Prayer, Support You, Long

  James Boswell, Isabelle de Charrière (1952). “Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764: Including His Correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zélide)”, New York : McGraw-Hill

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• How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Agony, Feelings, Crowds

  Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Short Stories”, p.336, Bottletree Books LLC

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• It is difficult to explain to children in the "overdeveloped" nations that not all children in the world have such beautiful and nourishing food. Awareness of this fact alone can help us overcome many of our own psychological pains. Eventually our contemplation can help us see how to assist those who need our help so much.

  Nhat Hanh

  Beautiful, Peace, Children

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• Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Errors, Two

  The Advancement of Learning bk. 1, ch. 5, sec. 8 (1605)

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• The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed,... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Giving, Contentment

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• In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

  Francis Bacon

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Character

  Francis Bacon, William Rawley (1863). “Philosophical works”, p.207

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