Quotes About Contemplation

Where did you learn that?" Vein asked, still staring. "I read," Bruno said evenly. "I talk less than the rest of you. It gives me time.

Why does it always feel like I'm standing on the edge of some kind of big, black pit?" "There are a lot of pits," Donovan said. "The most interesting lives are lived walking around the rims.

He always woke early, had coffee, checked his e-mail and then decided whether to climb back into bed.

By this time it was well past midnight. You know how that is. It's a time when you start asking questions about things that in the light of day you wouldn't consider twice. It's a time … well, we both know how that goes, in the dark hour.

I thought it best, finally, to start seeing where I've been rather than where I'm going.

Profound silence would brood over the valley, even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by nature, so incapable of entering into communion with her

I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet.

emphasize quite strongly the responsibility of all individual Christians to think carefully about issues of faith for ourselves,

Johnny Watters bends down, sponge in his hand, tongue in your ear, he whispers, "How shall we live, Brian? How shall we live?

Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn't rush into it

He hoped these students would learn how to be at home in the desert, not how to conquer it; and he hoped that, in the process, they might discover the spiritual value of quietude.

The process of reconciliation implies that people who want to engage in interfaith cooperation should be prepared to reflect critically on their own religious tradition. They should also contemplate what place their own religious tradition assigns to people of other faith traditions. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 52)

Winnie would never be free of religious thinking, and she couldn't imagine ever wanting to be. She just needed a new schedule for her faith, one whose appointments with the divine were arranged not only through sermons, songs, and scripture, but rather on a walk-in basis with rocks, water, air, blood, space, and time.

Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still Even among these rocks.

Beings as complex as ourselves need retreats from others to explore the depths of our character and our destiny. We need regular periods of solitude to replenish ourselves, to locate new sources of creativity and self-knowledge, and to discover possibilities in our souls that are invisible when we are with others.

I find myself thinking, "I'm not so sure this is a great idea." I find myself saying, "Great.

Still, isn't it nice to be nice, to hold a breath? Isn't it good to save up for it, and really relish it, just sometimes?

She closed her eyes and lifter her face to the

When I have a particular case in hand," he explained, "I . . . love to dig up the question by the roots and hold it up and dry it before the fires of the mind.

Whitman wrote articles on almost every topic, storing up images and impressions that would later be useful to him as a poet.

One way to look at a painting—and I use that word as shorthand for visual art in general—is to notice as you take its measure what it is you actually find yourself thinking about, which may differ from what you imagine you're supposed to be thinking about.

For some moments in life, there are no words.

Nonetheless: if only and if only and if only.

I am a sucker to contemplate opening to the idea of healing.