Quotes About Contemplation

There is only one way; Go within.

You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

You must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it.

Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at.

Understand, I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

All things exist in order to become images for us in some sense. And this does not cause them any harm: for while they express us ever more clearly, our soul bows down to them to the same degree.

Ich habe Hymnen, die ich schweige.

it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; the fact that a thing is difficult must be one more reason for our doing it.

This alone is needed: solitude, vast inner solitude. To go into yourself and meet no one for hours,—you must be able to achieve this. Be alone, as you were alone as a child, while the adults went about their business, caught up in matters that seemed important and grand because the grown-ups looked so busy and because you comprehended nothing of what they did.

This, a world seen no longer from the human point of view, but inside the angel, is perhaps my real task.

Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there's a church.

Schließlich wollte ich Ihnen ja auch nur raten, still und ernst durch Ihre Entwicklung durchzuwachsen; Sie können sie gar nicht heftiger stören, als wenn Sie nach außen sehen und von außen Antwort erwarten auf Fragen, die nur Ihr innerstes Gefühl in Ihrer leisteten Stunde vielleicht beantworten kann.

With the help of such impressions you regain your composure, win your way back out of the demands of the talking and chattering multtude (how voluble it is!), and you slowly learn to recognize the very few things in which something everlasting can be felt, something you can love, something solitary in which you can take part in silence.

Weißt du, ich will mich schleichen leise aus lautem Kreis, wenn ich erst die bleichen Sterne über den Eichen blühen weiß. Wege will ich erkiesen, die selten wer betritt in blassen Abendwiesen? und keinen Traum, als diesen: Du gehst mit.

You are looking outward, which, now above all, you should not do. No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself.

There's nothing like isolating a man to make him think.

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.

A man is what he thinks about all day long

Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.