Contemplative Quotes - Page 2

• It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

  Henri Nouwen

  Prayer, Silence, Contemplative Prayer

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• Almost everyone who reaches a plateau where he or she is happy and comfortable says its because of finding balance between work, relaxation, exercise, socialising and family - plus some alone time to do something contemplative, creative, or educational.

  Neil Strauss

  Educational, Exercise, Creative

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• In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Reading, Roots, Contemplative Life

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• There's something arbitrary about taking a picture. So I can stand at the edge of a highway and take one step forward and it can be a natural landscape untouched by man and I can take one step back and include a guardrail and change the meaning of the picture radically... I can take a picture of a person at one moment and make them look contemplative and photograph them two seconds later and make them look frivolous.

  Stephen Shore

  Photography, Art, Creativity

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• Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon the contemplative life (that is, the Hero).

  Ananda Coomaraswamy

  Life, Hero, Men

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• The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody.  He trusts his own visions.  He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men.  He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow.  The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

  Thomas Merton

  Sweet, Heart, Men

  Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

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• In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Contemplative Life, Self

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.86, New Directions Publishing

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• Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties. He who easily comprehends all that is before him, and soon exhausts any single subject, is always eager for new inquiries; and in proportion as the intellectual eye takes in a wider prospect, it must be gratified with variety, by more rapid flights and bolder excursions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Passion, Eye, Intellectual

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: with Murphy's essay”, p.135

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• When you are deeply contemplative, you listen more carefully and understand things which cannot be articulated.

  David A. Cooper

  Empathy, Understanding, Listening

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• There's no Biblical definition of contemplative prayer

  Mike Bickle

  Prayer, Biblical, Definitions

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• Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.

  Mother Teresa

  Heart, Water, Grace

  Mother Teresa (1985). “Mother Teresa: Contemplative in the Heart of the World”

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• Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. The end result is what matters. What one felt was what one experienced. One retires to bed as wearily from having dreamed as from having done hard physical labor. One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Journey, What Matters

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• This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her? She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Laughing, Wife, Bird

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.4890, Dell

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• The Protestant wing of the western church, which is a tiny percentage of the Body of Christ, is nearly completely (98%) unaware that the Holy Spirit is restoring contemplative prayer-center stage-to the church The Holy Spirit is restoring this precious jewel (contemplative prayer) to the body of Christ. This is the God ordained means of attaining the fullness of God.

  Mike Bickle

  Prayer, Mean, Jewels

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• Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.

  Djuna Barnes

  Feet, Contemplative Life, Effort

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.143, New Directions Publishing

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• There is no thing as a man who does not create mathematics and yet is a fine mathematics teacher. Textbooks, course material-these do not approach in importance the communication of what mathematics is really about, of where it is going, and of where it currently stands with respect to the specific branch of it being taught. What really matters is the communication of the spirit of mathematics. It is a spirit that is active rather than contemplative-a spirit of disciplined search for adventures of the intellect. Only as adventurer can really tell of adventures.

  Alfred Adler

  Teacher, Communication, Adventure

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• As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I consider myself a saint? How can I consider myself a contemplative? For the self I bother about does not really exist, never will, never did except in my own imagination.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Self, Long

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• Baseball endures at least in part because it is a contemplative sport that delights in nuances. Not a brazen game, eager to sell its thrills cheaply, but rather an understated affair that must be courted if its to be loved.

  Kenneth Turan

  Sports, Baseball, Games

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• Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.

  Richard Courant

  Struggle, Expression, Perfection

  Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins, Ian Stewart (1996). “What is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods”, p.23, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

  Francis Bacon

  Taken, Knowledge, Science

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1834). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: A New Edition:”, p.274

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• Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.

  Thomas Merton

  Heart, Meditation, Doubt

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• Meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Real

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature”, p.53, Advaita Ashrama

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• On the Left, on the Right, in the Middle; Authors, statesmen, thieves; so-called humanists and self-declared fascists; the adventurous and the contemplative, in every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and articulated as love and freedom.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Self, Expression, Feminist

  Andrea Dworkin (1989). “Pornography: men possessing women”, Plume

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• The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.

  Josef Pieper

  Men, May, Needs

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• In the active life all the vices are first of all to be removed by the practice of good works, so that in the contemplative life a man may, with now purified mental gaze, pass on to the contemplation of the Divine Light.

  Isidore of Seville

  Men, Contemplative Life, Light

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