Quotes About Contemplation

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the rooms and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

Consider the odd morphology of regret.

Let the place of the solitaires Be a place of perpetual undulation. Whether it be in mid-sea On the dark, green water-wheel, Or on the beaches, There must be no cessation Of motion, or of the noise of motion, The renewal of noise And manifold continuation; And, most, of the motion of thought And its restless iteration, In the place of the solitaires, Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation

Not less because in purple I descended The western day, through what you called The loneliest air, not less was I myself

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendos The blackbird whistling Or just after.

According to the Buddha, there are four ways of treating questions: (1) Some should be answered directly; (2) others should be answered by way of analysing them; (3) yet others should be answered by counter-questions; (4) and lastly, there are questions which should be put aside.

Looking back on things, the view always improves.

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age—I and my book—casting backward glances over our travel'd road.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven.

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

A great painter of men must (as has been said) have a faculty of conversing, but he must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of mankind that a man can only learn from himself.

Life is a school of probability. In the writings of every man of patient practicality, in the midst of whatever other defects, you will find a careful appreciation of the degrees of likelihood; a steady balancing of them one against another; a disinclination to make things too clear, to overlook the debit side of the account in mere contemplation of the enormousness of the credit.

The Arctic expresses the sum of all wisdom: Silence.

Yes, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark.

He opened his eyes to see the dented skull cap, still on the chair where Henry had left it. He looked at it a long while, knowing that it was far better to accept it than to turn away and forever fear it.

Ich bin ein Privatier und professioneller Flaneur, ich habe viel Zeit und Muße zum Beobachten. Und ich habe alle Herles-Olmshock-Romane von Olyander Conthura gelesen - zigmal! Das schult das detektivische Auge und die Kombinationsgabe ungemein!

Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.

La función del hombre sabio consiste, sobre todo, en deliberar rectamente… Y delibera rectamente, en el sentido más estricto de la palabra, quien apunta en sus cálculos hacia las más altas actividades abiertas del hombre. ARISTÓTELES, Ética de Nicómaco, VI

Para ver claro, basta con cambiar la dirección de la mirada. ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

La soledad es una decisión personal:

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

I'm slow with a new idea, and want to think it over alone, where I'm sure it's the idea and not the man that's getting me.