Top 100 Contemplation's Quotes
#1. To contemplation's sober eye,
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began,
Alike the busy and the gay,
But flutter through life's little day.
Thomas Gray
#2. The stronghold of the contemplation of Christ's glory affords the soul rest, for it will be made evident that our troubles grow on the root of an over-valuation of temporal things. The mind is its own greatest troubler.
John Owen
#3. I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.
David Knopfler
#4. One does not contemplate it like a picture. The idea of contemplation disappears completely. Simply take note that it's a bottle rack, or that it's a bottle rack that has changed its destination ... It's not the visual question of the readymade that counts; it's the fact that it exists, even.
Marcel Duchamp
#5. The cool contemplation of other people's suffering while one exhibits polished manners in a society that is deemed civil is only a shade less immoral than the direct infliction of suffering. Thus, civilization, as it is often practiced today, is really manufactured, inauthentic civilization.
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
#6. I benefit from contemplation, but it's a great antidote to that, having someone interesting come into the studio environment to be painted, so that I can experience a little bit of their world.
Stuart Pearson Wright
#7. I pray the Lord to weaken today and remove tomorrow all that obstructs the soul's contemplation.
Guigo II The Carthusian
#8. By contemplation of God's matchless love, we take upon us His nature. Christ
Ellen G. White
#9. Are you saying you don't love me?" Hazael asked Liraz. "Because I love you. I think." He paused in contemplation. "Oh. No. Never mind. That's fear.
Laini Taylor
#10. mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together; and when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father's pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looking upon the sky and clouds, there
Sereno Dwight
#11. There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.
William Golding
#12. [S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.
Joan Silber
#13. Politicians are addicted to spending and revenue extraction. As with an addict, there's little pause for moral or legal contemplation.
David Malpass
#14. 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?
Teo Yi Han
#15. He captures memories because if he forgets them, it's as though they didn't happen.
Donald Miller
#16. 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 impaired.
John Milton
#17. Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment.
Philip Zaleski
#18. Zazen is seated meditation-the opposite of contemplation-the emptying of the mind of all thoughts in order simply to be. In the midst of all evil, not a thought is aroused in the mind-this is called za. Seeing into one's Self-nature, not being moved at all-this is called Zen.
Huineng
#19. We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are ... In
this respect a "revolutionary" literature written for the convinced is just as
much an abandonment as is a conservative literature devoted to the ...
contemplation of one's own navel.
Eduardo Galeano
#20. The Warrior of the Light needs time to (her)self. And (s)he uses that time for rest, contemplation, and contact with the Soul of the World. Even in the midst of a battle, (s)he manages to meditate.
Paulo Coelho
#21. Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness
Friedrich Nietzsche
#22. Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.
Deepak Chopra
#23. 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.
Sanober Khan
#24. Death showed up in my life very early on, so I'm aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there's a sort of contemplation of mortality - although 'True Blood' doesn't fall into that. Even though there's such a ridiculously high body count!
Alan Ball
#25. Life isn't memorable enough to remember everything. It's not like there are explosions all the time, or dog smoking cigarettes.
Donald Miller
#26. To broaden one's prospective is to push back the swirling winds of ignorance.
Joel T. McGrath
#27. Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It's work, and often it's hard work.
Wendelin Van Draanen
#28. The insights we receive when going silent, it's our gift to ourselves. Returning and living them, sharing them, that is our gift to the world.
Kamal Ravikant
#29. The notion of education through handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life's activities.
Mahatma Gandhi
#30. Another aspect inviting contemplation is the fact that the affective tone of any feeling depends on the type of contact that has caused its arising. Once this conditioned nature of feelings is fully apprehended, detachment arises naturally and one's identification with feelings starts to dissolve.
Analayo
#31. No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other; each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.
T. S. Eliot
#32. The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it's suffering.
Ovid
#33. In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It's the place of reflection and contemplation, and it's the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.
Angeles Arrien
#34. In certain strains of Judaism, there's a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can't possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we're off track.
Ben Marcus
#35. Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic-in a word, moral-undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage.
George Will
#36. Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man's reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?
John D. MacDonald
#37. Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.
Renzo Piano
#38. Words are very powerful and can lead anyone reading them or hearing them, into contemplation and insight. How the mind follows suit is rarely palpable or expected. This impact is not a matter of metaphysical effects nor of an unexplainable phenomenon. It's simply part of being human.
David Mitchell
#39. Creative visualization may be described as an extended meditation session that reaches beyond passive contemplation and achieves transformative action. The uses to which it may be applied are limited only by an individual's imagination.
Aberjhani
#40. Contemplation, sadly, helps you see your woundedness! That's why most people do not stay long with contemplative prayer, because it's not very glorious. It's a continual humiliation, realizing, Oh my God, I did it again. I still don't know how to love!
Richard Rohr
#41. I object," said the man emphatically. He stopped work again and studied Elnora. Even the watching mother could not blame him. Against the embankment, in the shade of the bridge Elnora's bright head, and her lavender dress made a picture worthy of much contemplation.
I object!" repeated the man.
Gene Stratton-Porter
#42. Leaving behind the false, return to the true: make no discriminations between self and others. In contemplation, one's mind should be stable and unmoving, like a wall.
Bodhidharma
#43. Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.
William L. Shirer
#44. The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.
Sri Aurobindo
#45. It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views.
Peter York
#46. Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature's grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.
Heinrich Heine
#47. I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.
Jane Smiley
#48. 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)
Sarah Ban Breathnach
#49. COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
Ambrose Bierce
#50. So many leaves have fallen on my life. Some settled nicely to rest, but most fell, withered to bitter cold and drifted on. But, after all that, I would brave all the coldness of humanity again for the sight of a few more beautiful yellow leaves falling on Aspen, and the birds....
E.S. Lehman
#51. With passions stilled and one's nature firm, all destinies are in harmony; When the full moon of contemplation is reached you will be pure.
Wu Cheng'en
#52. 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
#53. Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#54. If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it.
Criss Jami
#55. The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
William Hazlitt
#56. From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.
Henri Matisse
#58. To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.
Isaac Newton
#59. The wider our contemplation of creation, the grander is our conception of God.
Cyril Of Jerusalem
#60. The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#61. We have fallen on hard times of the spirit, with many of the people more concerned with fear of evil than contemplation of the good.
Clifford D. Simak
#62. Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation.
Ray Simpson
#63. Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
William Butler Yeats
#64. The greatness of poetry comes from its struggle to express the rapture of the soul in the contemplation of beauty.
Anthony S. Maulucci
#65. You know, Monsieur, that, although the contemplative life is more perfect than the active life, it is not, however, more so than one which embraces at the same time contemplation and action, as does yours, by God's grace.
Vincent De Paul
#66. When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence; so sweet is zealous contemplation.
William Shakespeare
#67. On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.
Kate Adie
#68. Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation.
Aldous Huxley
#69. If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign tous: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?
David Hume
#70. The contemplation of it, even at this distance of time, has taken away my breath and my grammar, and unless I subdue my emotion, my spelling will go too.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#71. Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms. Martha and Mary are sisters.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#72. The birds are the saints, who fly to heaven on the wings of contemplation, who are so removed from the world that they have no business on earth. They do not labour, but by contemplation alone they already live in heaven.
Anthony Of Padua
#73. Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#74. While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.
Ambrose Bierce
#76. It is in the contemplation of what you desire that you create what it is you want for yourself
Wayne Dyer
#77. Suddenness," he says. " You do not prepare, you do not explain, you do not apologize. Suddenly, you go. And with you, you take all contemplation, all consideration of your own departure. All the suffering that would have come from knowing comes after you are gone, and you are not a part of it.
Tea Obreht
#78. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.
Bounce, effort, and snark.
Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.
Sugar, curiosity, and rain.
And yet, there was a witch.
There's always a witch.
E. Lockhart
#79. The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.
Paul Bowles
#80. A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious.
Joseph Addison
#81. The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.
Edwin Percy Whipple
#82. Repose is the secret of all contemplation and meditation, the secret of getting in tune with that aspect of life which is the essence of all things. When one is not accustomed to take repose, one does not know what is behind one's being.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#83. Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.
Aldous Huxley
#85. Love never comes just a little bit at a time, I thought, as I watched him, absorbed in contemplation of the Virgin. The previous day, the world made sense, even without love's presence. But now we needed each other in order to see the true brilliance of things.
Paulo Coelho
#86. Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell.
Euripides
#87. The contemplation of Mont Blanc's unchanging summits for three or four days last month, the sight of that eternal snow, immaculate, sublime in its whiteness and calm, was enough to restore to my soul a serenity it had not known for a long time.
George Sand
#89. I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease the tension and think about what's going to happen next.
Sarah McLachlan
#90. The first great thing is to find yourself and for that you need solitude and contemplation - at least sometimes. I can tell you deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.
Fridtjof Nansen
#91. Music is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#92. I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, ininvention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.
George Bernard Shaw
#93. It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.
Russell Kirk
#94. What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
Meister Eckhart
#95. The height of devotion is reached when reverence and contemplation produce passionate worship, which in turn breaks forth in thanksgiving and praise in word and song.
R. Kent Hughes
#96. Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.
Aristotle.
#97. There is something in the ardour and ingenousness of youth, which is particularly pleasing to the contemplation of an old man, if his feelings have not been entirely corroded by the world.
Ann Radcliffe
#98. Good art is always dangerous, always open-ended. Once you put it out in the world you lose control of it; people will fit it into their minds in all sorts of different ways.
Greil Marcus
#99. What the jogger's face shows is not boredom but contemplation, which Thomas Aquinas described as man's highest activity save one - contemplation plus putting the fruits of that contemplation into action.
George Sheehan
#100. It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.
Thomas Aquinas
