Quotes About Contemplation

The more I understand and contemplate Jesus' surrender of Himself for me, the more do I give myself again to Him. The surrender is a mutual one: the love comes from both sides. His giving of Himself makes such an impression on my heart, that my heart with the self-same love and joy becomes entirely His.

No man can expect to make progress in holiness who is not often and long alone with God.

Where was he? Somewhere in there he lost the first phase of youth, like the first phase of a rocket; it had fallen, depleted, behind him. And here was the second. And last. He swore he would not give it to anyone; he would enjoy it. He would enjoy it alone. But: how to live alone and yet not be alone?

Arthur Less has left the room while remaining in it.

We waste so much time within ourselves.

As with almost every sunset, but with this one in particular: shut the fuck up.

There follows, I am sad to say, a very long ride on a very slow ride... to your final place of rest. He sighs, for he has spoken the truth for all men. Less understands: he has been assigned a poet.

No one could rival Author Less for his ability to exit a room while remaining inside it. He sat, and his mind immediately left me behind...I was too much in law of his self-sufficiency, of his freedom. To disappear within himself for ten or fifteen minutes while I drew him, when I could barely sit still to hold the pencil.

I think anything like that- which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone- people always feel sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone?

Physical activity engages our brains in ways that mere thought or contemplation does not—indeed, there is reason to believe there is no such thing as "mere thought." All human thought requires embodiment, and without bodies we could not think. We can have a faint idea or hunch in our mind, but it is only when we speak or write it that it becomes clear, not just to others but to ourselves as well.

Boredom is actually a crucial warning sign—as important in its own way as physical pain. It's a sign that our capacity for wonder and delight, contemplation and attention, real play and fruitful work, has been dangerously depleted.

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

Every night there is something to ruminate on. The vagrant mind knows no boundaries. It leaps

Her pace is furious as she walks along the beach, the surf competing with the noise in her head.

She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciate it even though she couldn't have it. Why did she always feel she had to do something in the face of beauty?

There was a moment in between, a moment flung free in the midst of the transition, when he made contact. That was the moment she would dwell on.

she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.

And many more, I said softly, watching Danielle lead the way.

bug on the wall.

We walked the rest of the way home without saying another word.

If you just focus on the trees swaying outside the window without distraction, you will see your true face.

In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.