Quotes About Contemplation

But, if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from these heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime... But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it. -

In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

Every man contemplates an angel in his future self

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.

Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least.

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.

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

We are what we think about all day long.

Our thinking is a pious reception.

Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and by the very knowledge of functions and processes to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes unpoetic.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself.

We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

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 what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.

The ancestor of every action is a thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the words of a great writer, we find our own neglected thoughts.

The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space