Contemplation Quotes (197) Spiritual Sayings

Summary: Definition of Contemplation. Contemplation is profound thinking about something. In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation.


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Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe. 
~ Wayne Dyer


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


Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle - even though it cannot be solved - is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine. 
~ Tom Robbins


If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world. 
~ Sri Chinmoy


What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
~ Meister Eckhart


The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
~ Aristotle


For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.
~ Aristotle


Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blessed, beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed.
~ John Mason Neale


Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.
~ Thomas Aquinas


The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.
~ Jacob Bronowski


If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.
~ Sri Chinmoy


What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
~ Meister Eckhart


It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.
~ Rachel Carson


Better to illuminate, than merely to shine.
~ Thomas Aquinas


Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.
~ Dodie Smith


Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion.
~ Liberty Hyde Bailey


The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.
~ Simone Weil


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


Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
~ Henry David Thoreau


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


A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
~ W. H. Auden 


True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.
~ Michelangelo


Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
~ Thomas Merton


I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.
~ Elizabeth Janeway


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


Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.
~ Auguste Rodin


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


Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?
~ Carl Sandburg


True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.
~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty


Self-recognition, the self-contemplation of spirit is the primary movement out of which all creativeness proceeds.
~ Paul Twitchell


Realism and Naturalism rely mostly on the eye of the flesh. Abstract, conceptual and surrealistic art rely mostly on the eye of the mind. Great works of art rely on the eye of contemplation, the eye of the spirit.
~ Alex Grey


Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.
~ Herbert Read


The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same. Everything becomes relative and therefore doubtful. And while man, hesitant and questioning, contemplates... his spirit yearns for an answer that will allay the turmoil of doubt and uncertainty.
~ Carl Jung


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


To Contemplation's sober eye. / Such is the race of Man.
~ Thomas Gray 


That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.
~ Ayn Rand


In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.
~ Plotinus


I can recommend nothing better... than that you endeavor to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works of others.
~ Joshua Reynolds


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


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


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


Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.
~ Salman Rushdie


Contemplate sweetly on love, and the wisdom of God shall find you.
~ Harold Klemp


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.
~ James Monroe


When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence; so sweet is zealous contemplation.
~ William Shakespeare


I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.
~ Vincent Van Gogh


It was the contemplation of God that created men who were equal, for it was in God that they were equal.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery


I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.
~ Elizabeth Janeway


One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.
~ Emile Durkheim


This Ariyan Eightfold Path, that is to say: Right view, right aim, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right contemplation.
~ Gautama Buddha


The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman.
~ Ananda Coomaraswamy 

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.
~ Emile Durkheim


Vice: Whatever was passion in the contemplation of man, being brought forth by his will into action.
~ James Harrington


If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
~ Fran Lebowitz


He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
~ Isaac Asimov


But unfortunately Locke treated ideas of reflection as if they were another class of objects of contemplation beside ideas of sensation.
~ Samuel Alexander


Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.
~ Russell M. Nelson


We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.
~ Alexander Herzen


Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.
~ John Jay Chapman


An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.
~ Eduard Hanslick


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


The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.
~ Gabriel Marcel


It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.
~ Lionel Trilling


The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
~ Diane Arbus


Him that yon soars on golden wing, guiding the fiery-wheelèd throne, the Cherub Contemplation.
~ John Milton


The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.
~ Isaac D'Israeli


A wise man seeks by music to strengthen his soul: the thoughtless one uses it to stifle his fears.
~ Confucius 

Meditate nothing. Learn to contemplate.
Contemplate glory. There will be a light.
Contemplate Truth until it burns your eyes out.
~ Robert Frost


In vocal prayer we go to God on foot. In meditation we go to God on horseback. In contemplation we go to God in a jet.
~ Fulton J. Sheen


For contemplation he and valour formed; / For softness she and sweet attractive grace, / He for God only, she for God in him: / His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule.
~ John Milton


There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration.
~ Benjamin Creme


Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death...to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up-never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation; it's like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You'll get wonderful things out of that.
~ Alan Watts


Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet.
~ Thomas Aquinas


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.
~ Lord David Cecil


For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald


The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.
~ Josef Pieper


The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
~ T. S. Eliot


The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.
~ Simone Weil


The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.
~ William Penn


To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
~ Robert Frost


The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
~ Vladimir Nabokov


We are whirling through endless space, with and inconceivable speed, all around everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere there is energy. There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly. Then, with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides. The mere contemplation of these magnificent possibilities expand our minds, strengthens our hopes and and fills our hearts with supreme delight.
~ Nikola Tesla


The Library is an open sanctuary. It is devoted to individual intellectual inquiry and contemplation. Its function is to provide free access to ideas and information. It is a haven of privacy, a source of both cultural and intellectual sustenance for the individual reader. Since it is thus committed to free and open inquiry on a personal basis, the Library must remain open, with access to it always guaranteed.
~ Robert G. Vosper


I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne


The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
~ Carl Sagan


Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! And transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation.
~ Clare of Assisi


If there is a special Hades for writers is would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.
~ John Dos Passos


It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
~ Edgar Allan Poe


There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.
~ Lin Yutang


The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero


I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses
~ Jeanette Winterson 

For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere in spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us.
~ Julian of Norwich


In daily practice, reflect on the benefits of love, compassion and kindness, then reflect on the disadvantages of anger. Such continuous contemplation, the growing appreciation of love, has the effect of reducing our inclination towards hatred and increasing our respect for love. By this means even anger can be diminished.
~ Dalai Lama


Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.
~ Mother Teresa


Contemplation is nothing else but a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which, if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.
~ John of the Cross


The aim of life is no more to control the mind, but to develop it harmoniously; not to achieve salvation here after, but to make the best use of it here below; and not to realise truth, beauty and good only in contemplation, but also in the actual experience of daily life; social progress depends not upon the ennoblement of the few but on the enrichment of democracy; universal brotherhood can be achieved only when there is an equality of opportunity - of opportunity in the social, political and individual life.
~ Bhagat Singh


The highest goal of music is to connect one's soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment
~ Pythagoras


... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.
~ Josef Pieper


I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
~ Francis Bacon


Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.
~ John Evelyn


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


...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having. The consumer is right-there is pleasure to be had in good things, a sacred and almost unspeakable pleasure, but the consumer wrongly thinks that one finds this pleasure by having more and more possessions instead of possessing them more truly through grateful contemplation. And here we are, living in an economy that perpetuates this tragedy.
~ Brian D. McLaren


In looking for my mind, I discovered that it seems to be in many different places. Sometimes it is drinking a glass of water, remembering swimming in the summer, feeling the breeze. In this contemplation I observed that the self is more elusive than I thought.
~ Sakyong Mipham


The wonders of the music of the future will be of a higher & wider scale and will introduce many sounds that the human ear is now incapable of hearing. Among these new sounds will be the glorious music of angelic chorales. As men hear these they will cease to consider Angels as figments of their imagination.
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Holidays and vacations can help to balance activity with contemplation, haste with more natural rhythms, noise with the heralding silence of peace.
~ Pope John Paul II


Artists are the seeds, brave enough to live and flower before humanity. Our soil is contemplation, our water, its understanding. Whether my petals be beautiful to another, to I and The Maker, they are Unique and yet, only equally as beautiful as any other. Some call that being a Dreamer. I call it, being Belov'ed.
~ Rasun


Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
~ John Muir


Music can minister to minds diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with its sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the full bosom of all perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.
~ William Shakespeare


I think that Jean Houston has broken through to a new understanding of the sense and uses of inward-turned contemplation-a n understanding that leaves the Freudian schools of technique and theory far behind. The accent is not on the curing of disease but on the enlargement, rather, of our health.
~ Joseph Campbell


Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.
~ Richard Rohr


If you learn music, you'll learn history. If you learn music, you'll learn mathematics. If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to learn.
~ Edgar Cayce


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


We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of action.
~ Pope Gregory I


Straight away, remove yourself from the field of spiritual progression , stay away from contemplation and skillful discourse, do not do research or meditate on the divinities, and stop concentrating and reciting textbooks! Tell me, what is the absolute nature of reality which allows no room for doubt? Listen carefully! Stop holding on to this or that, inhabit your true absolute nature, and peacefully enjoy the essence of what it is to be alive!
~ Abhinavagupta


The aesthetic value of creation cannot be overlooked. Our very contact with nature has a deep restorative power; contemplation of its magnificence imparts peace and serenity. The Bible speaks again and again of the goodness and beauty of creation, which is called to glorify God.
~ Pope John Paul II 


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


Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.
~ Aldous Huxley


The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connexion of its parts, the infinite hierarchy and absolute evidence of the truths with which it is concerned, these, and such like, are the surest grounds of the title of mathematics to human regard, and would remain unimpeached and unimpaired were the plan of the universe unrolled like a map at our feet, and the mind of man qualified to take in the whole scheme of creation at a glance.
~ James Joseph Sylvester


Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.
~ Aristotle


The Church and the world have a great need of eucharistic worship. Jesus waits for us in this sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease
~ Pope John Paul II


A person may rise to the highest degree of contemplation even when busily occupied.
~ Mary Euphrasia Pelletier


It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
~ Henry David Thoreau


Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.
~ Richard Rohr


It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible.
~ Victor de Laprade


Man's music is seen as a means of restoring the soul, as well as confused and discordant bodily afflictions, to the harmonic proportions that it shares with the world soul of the cosmos.
~ Plato


The profound meaning of music's essential aim... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being
~ Igor Stravinsky


Whoever wishes to hold the fortress of contemplation must first of all train in the camp of action.
~ Pope Gregory I


At a certain stage of our progressive attainment, every Initiate undergoes an "Illumination by Sound" in which the Music of the Spheres becomes to us a living reality. When the magical powers of sound are rediscovered and scientifically directed to the specific purpose of healing... and when man has learned how to release the mantraic powers embodied in such inspired utterances, he will master the energies transcending even those unleashed by the atomic physicist of today. They will be energies of yet another and higher dimension.
~ Corinne Heline


Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.
~ Thomas Merton


As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.
~ Susan Sontag


We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye ... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
~ Jacob Bronowski


If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.
~ Federico Fellini


What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object.
~ Josef Pieper


The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but "the true saint" goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.
~ Abu-Sa'id Abul-Khayr


Through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. This doctrine is incompatible with the infinite love of God. God is not a judge but a friend and a lover of humanity. God seeks not to condemn but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device. Hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God.
~ Pope Francis


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.
~ George Santayana


Where there is Love and Wisdom, there is neither Fear nor Ignorance.
Where there is Patience and Humility, there is neither Anger nor Annoyance.
Where there is Poverty and Joy, there is neither Cupidity nor Avarice.
Where there is Peace and Contemplation, there is neither Care nor Restlessness.
Where there is the Fear of God to guard the dwelling, there no enemy can enter.
Where there is Mercy and Prudence, there is neither Excess nor Harshness.
~ Francis of Assisi


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


I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys...
~ Umberto Eco


Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.
~ Pope John Paul II


There are many beautiful things in the world around us, but pearls can only be discovered in the depths of the sea; if we wish to posses spiritual pearls we must plunge into the depths, that is, we must pray, we must sink down into the secret depths of contemplation and prayer. Then we shall perceive precious pearls.
~ Sadhu Sundar Singh


Worship is adoring contemplation of God.
~ R. A. Torrey


I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
~ Viktor E. Frankl


On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree
~ W. S. Merwin


MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
~ Ambrose Bierce


True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.
~ Martin Luther


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


All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.
~ Paulo Coelho


I know," he said in almost bored contemplation. "My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood." "I'd chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laces with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud.
~ Darynda Jones


No father, no son, no mother, no daughter should get so busy that he or she does not have time to study the scriptures and the words of modern prophets. None of us should get so busy that we crowd out contemplation and praying. None of us should become so busy in our formal Church assignments that there is no room left for quiet Christian service to our neighbors.
~ Spencer W. Kimball


To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal.
~ Plutarch


He that divines the secret of my music is freed from the unhappiness that haunts the whole world of men.
~ Ludwig van Beethoven


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


Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.
~ Sri Aurobindo


Ah, music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling and I come.
~ Confucius


Magic is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the virtues of things through the application of them one to the other.
~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa


Work without contemplation is never enough.
~ Douglas V. Steere


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


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


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


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 


COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
~ Ambrose Bierce


I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
~ Viktor E. Frankl


True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.
~ Thomas Merton


I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.
~ Steve Coogan


It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.
~ John Calvin


I cleanse the windows of my mind, that it may become a mirror reflecting inspiration from the most High. I do this, not with strenuous effort, but through quiet contemplation, through gently reaching and affirming an inward recognition. I know exactly what to do in every situation. There is an inspiration within me which governs every act, every thought, with certainty, with conviction and in peace.
~ Ernest Holmes


But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.
~ Francis Bacon


So it follows that those who have reason have freedom to will or not to will, although this freedom is not equal in all of them. [...] human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.
~ Boethius


One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die a man. The bed of death brings every human being to his pure individuality, to the intense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of all relations - the relations between the creature and his Creator.
~ Daniel Webster


I'm having the time of my life figuring out this next move.
~ John Mayer


The notion of education through handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life's activities.
~ Mahatma Gandhi


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


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


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


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


Paris strikes the vulgar part of us infinitely the most, but to a thinking mind London is incomparably the most delightful subject for contemplation.
~ Samuel Rogers


Prayer can assume very different forms, from quiet, blessed contemplation of God, in which eye meets eye in restful meditation, to deep sighs or sudden exclamations of wonder, joy, gratitude or adoration.
~ Ole Hallesby


Art is about asking questions and engaging a dialog. By challenging or investigating conventions contemporary art helps promote an on-going sense of discovery, contemplation, and understanding. I think these are all important things.
~ Kim Anderson


You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?
~ Thomas Merton


In creating a work of art, the psyche or soul of the artist ascends from the earthly realm into the heavenly. There, free of all images, the soul is fed in contemplation by the essences of the highest realm, knowing the permanent noumena of things. Then, satiated with this knowing, it descends again to the earthly realm. And precisely at the boundary between the two worlds, the soul’s spiritual knowledge assumes the shapes of symbolic imagery: and it is these images that make permanent the work of art. Art is thus materialized dream, separated from the ordinary consciousness of waking life.
~ Pavel Florensky


The language of cinema as it has evolved has also excluded vast swathes of human experience. The forms we find in the process of making a film can start to redress this balance and venture into uncharted territory. This is not just about unsung identities but about the subtleties and nuances of contemplation, the drifting spaces in which the worlds of the very small and the very large collide. Camerawork is a part of that.
~ Sally Potter


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.
~ Aldous Huxley


I must pack my short lifer full of interesting events and creative activity. Philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. I intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development. Then, and before physical deterioration obtrudes, I shall go on some last wilderness trip to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return.
~ Everett Ruess


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