Best 237 quotes in «contemplation quotes» category

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. In such a way that they have the whole world as background.

To see this way fosters not only gratitude but compassion for the creatures we behold. The sustained gaze required to find the adequate word engages us in contemplation and reminds us of the worthiness of what is given to us to witness.

To broaden one's prospective is to push back the swirling winds of ignorance.

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

Universe is an empty mirror. Life is just the reflection of your deep thoughts.

Time passes, like clouds in the sky. Weeks and months go by as if they were a single day. Summer fades to fall, winter yields to spring, different minutes of the same hour.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is pleasure beyond compare.

We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions - contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world - amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of the attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together can carry it in infinitely tender love.

We do not see God in contemplation - we know Him by love: for his pure love and when we taste the experience of loving God for his own sake alone, we know by experience who and what he is.

We have become a nation of thoughtless rushers, intent on doing before thinking, and hoping what we do magically works out. If it doesn’t, we rush to do something else, something also not well thought-out, and then hope for more magic.

Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better. (January 17)

Western Christianity, for example, is very much influenced by Western materialism, and is predominantly anthropocentric. In the Western churches, there is almost never any mention of meditation or contemplative prayer, but instead a great concern with "serving our brethren" or "serving the world." Too often, such anthropocentrism forgets that, unless it replenishes itself in the waters of contemplation, unless it becomes illumined through contact with the Divine Light, it will have nothing of any value to give, and no way to dispel the darkness of the world.

When I was young I would throw a rock into the water to see what kind of splash I could make. Now I am content to admire the placidity of the surface that mirrors back to us all that is.

When one has achieved the object of one's desires, it is evident that one's real desire was not the ignorant possession of the desired object but to know it as possessed--as actually contemplated, as within one.

What does the anticipation feel like? The sensation of staring into the void, the awareness of an end’s impending arrival? Burning and being extinguished simultaneously?

When we really want to hear, and be heard by, someone we love, we do not go rushing into noisy crowds. Silence is a form of intimacy. That’s how we experience it with our friends and lovers. As relationships grow deeper and more intimate, we spend more and more quiet time alone with our lover. We talk in low tones about the things that matter. We do not shout them to each other. We may shout about them to others, but quietness is the hallmark of love.

When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.

When you become responsive to the solicitations of silence, you may be called to explore the invitation. This exploration is a kind of laboratory. You may sit and observe the coming and going of perceptions. You remain present to them but do not follow them. Following a thought is what maintains it. If you remain present without becoming an accomplice, agitation slows down through lack of fuel. In the absence of agitation you are taken by the resonance of stillness.

Who among us has not suddenly looked into his child's face, in the midst of the toils and troubles of everyday life, and at that moment "seen" that everything which is good, is loved and lovable, loved by God! Such certainties all mean, at bottom, one and the same thing: that the world is plumb and sound; that everything comes to its appointed goal; that in spite of all appearances, underlying all things is - peace, salvation, gloria; that nothing and no one is lost; that "God holds in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is." Such nonrational, intuitive certainties of the divine base of all that is can be vouchsafed to our gaze even when it is turned toward the most insignificant-looking things, if only it is a gaze inspired by love. That, in the precise sense, is contemplation... Out of this kind of contemplation of the created world arise in never-ending wealth all true poetry and all real art, for it is the nature of poetry and art to be paean and praise heard above all the wails of lamentation. No one who is not capable of such contemplation can grasp poetry in a poetic fashion, that is to say, in the only meaningful fashion. The indispensability, the vital function of the arts in man's life, consists above all in this: that through them contemplation of the created world is kept alive and active.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because we destroyed its natural habitat.

Yesterday, she shed tears, keeping her head on my shoulders. And I think she's not going to be fine because I know she won't. Because a couple of years back, I wasn't. And when you know that you've fallen hard on a cold ground and are still lying there, what do you tell others who are taking the fall? You close your eyes. You accept to lie there a little longer. But I lie on my bed now, and it's a little too warm today.

A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.

When the last leaf falls, what will die within us?

Who reflects too much will accomplish little.

Wind is on fire" - beautiful words. What causes the fire, what enhances it, and what finally extinguishes it by itself or by bringing in rainclouds, gets identified with it. Do breath and life have the same relationship with each other!

Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand. The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock. He settled deeper into the arm-chair and put his feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was eternity.

Words, with their multiple meanings and nuances are like trees and oral communication like a forest. Trees are good for hiding, forest for losing the path. When one is trying to contemplate the horizon of illusion and reality, trees and forests can offer no help.

Amid those scenes of solitude... the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

Action isn’t my forte. I’m an expert on contemplation and mild regret.

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

Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.

Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.

Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation.

Books that talk about 'contemplation' often seem to have been written on Jupiter. This one is a sterling exception.

But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.

Contemplation for an hour is better than formal worship for sixty years.

Contemplation is wisdom's best nurse.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

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.

Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.

Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

Do not contemplate on death; it is just an incident in life; contemplate on God, who is the master of all life.

Faith, it is evident, may be relied on to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation.

Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation.

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Furthermore, the apostolic life does not exclude contemplation but encompasses it and profits by it to know better the eternal truths it must proclaim