Best 237 quotes in «contemplation quotes» category

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.

Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature's grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.

Our very contract with nature has a deep restorative power; contemplation of its magnificence imparts peace and serenity.

Self-contemplation is infallibly the symptom of disease.

Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action.

Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.

So in life, some enter the services of fame and others money, but the best choice is that of those few who spend their time in the contemplation of nature, and as lovers of wisdom.

Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.

Recitation of the Qur'an without contemplation and thought is futile.

Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

the contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation

That which a man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

Teach correctly... Find delight in contemplation.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

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.

The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.

The great increase of our population throughout the Union will alone produce an important effect, and in no quarter will it be so sensibly felt as in those in contemplation.

The eye and soul are caressed in the contemplation of form and colour. The subtle changes of colour over a surface - transitions that are like music - are intangible in their reaction upon us. There is an immediate sensuous appeal!

The initial step for us all to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.

The greatness of contemplation can be given to none but those who love.

The highest mission of music is to serve as a link between God and Man.

The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.

The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.

The law of flying was not discovered by the contemplation of things staying on the ground.

The way of nothingness is the way of Zen. It is just a term. The contemplation of nothingness or everythingness is where everything starts.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

True contemplation is reflecting on the blessings of God in your life.

Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the distant song of an insect, lost in contemplation of the flavours to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance.

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.

Wisdom requires not only the investigation of many things, but contemplation of the mystery.

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

Yesterday for contemplation, today for action.

Your mind makes you dance like a monkey all the time... Now you have to become stronger; you have to make the mind dance. Make it dance on the stage of mantra. For that, mediate and repeat mantra.

A fish-trap is for catching fish; once you've caught the fish, you can forget about the trap. A rabbit-snare is for catching rabbits; once you've caught the rabbit, you can forget about the snare. Words are for catching ideas; once you've caught the idea, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a person who knows how to forget about words so that I can have a few words with them?

A landing place is a famous thing, but it is only enjoyable for a time by any mortal who deserves one at all.

A life not truly lived is hurt and fear, not healed and acknowledged.

A life not truly lived is hurt and fear, not healed or acknowledged.

An individual excels where the institution fails.

Anytime you meditate, some electric jerks occur in your thigh...the symbol of premonition of an unpleasant event that has happened or will take place in future.

Art is contemplation’,” a voice said out of nowhere. “‘It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

...as soon as you think of yourself as teaching contemplation to others, you make another mistake. No one teaches contemplation except God, who gives it. The best you can do is write something that will serve as an occasion for someone else to realize what God wants of him.

As the sky prepares to settle its tired, aching feet into the night’s velvet slippers I settle, into my armchair, soaking the teabag, of my thoughts, into warm liquidy stars.

At the same time [the contemplative] most earnestly wants everybody else to share his peace and his joy. His contemplation gives him a new outlook on the world of men. He looks about him with a secret and tranquil surmise which he perhaps admits to no one; hoping to find in the faces of other men or to hear in their voices some sign of vocation and potentiality for the same deep happiness and wisdom. He finds himself speaking of God to the men in whom he hopes he has recognized the light of his own peace, the awakening of his own secret: or if he cannot speak to them, he writes for them, and his contemplative life is still imperfect without sharing, without companionship, without communion.

At the heart of the kind of understanding involved in the humanities another dimension of reason is involved, which one can perhaps call contemplative. Take the example of attempting to read, or understand, a poem. There is an element of problem-solving: the meaning of certain words no longer, perhaps, in current use, the detecting of allusions to the literary tradition to which the poem belongs these can sometimes be ‘solved’ and a definitive answer produced. But having done all that, we have not finished: we have only begun —we have, as we might say, cleared the ground for an attempt to read, to understand, the poem. Here something else is involved: not a restless attempt to solve problems, to reach a kind of clarity, but rather an attempt to listen, to engage with the meaning of the poet, to hear what he has to say. We shall not do that if we misunderstand the meaning he attached to his words, or miss his allusion, but we do not necessarily hear the poet if we have simply solved all such problems. What is needed is a sympathetic listening, an engagement with the mind of the poet, and this sort of understanding has no end. There is no definitive solution: understanding is a matter of engagement, and constantly renewed engagement. WHAT is understood is much more elusive in this case than what is understood when we solve a problem. It is not a matter of facts, but a matter of reality: the reality of human life, its engagement with others, its engagement with God.

Be alone with the sea for it is there you will find answers to questions you didn’t realize exist.

Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?