Quotes About Contemplation

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. (from The Messenger)

If you're John Muir you want trees to live among. If you're Emily, a garden will do. Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it. When one is alone and lonely, the body gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, or splashes into the cold river, or pushes through the ice-crusted snow. Anything that touches. God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable. But holiness is visible, entirely.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field, in the middle of the world, breathing

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.

I did think, let's go about this slowly. This is important. This should take some really deep thought. We should take small thoughtful steps. But, bless us, we didn't.

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?

All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart. How would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life. I too dip myself toward the immeasurable.

I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines... I was thinking: so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray. (from poem, Five A.M. in the Pinewoods)

For me it was important to be alone; solitude was a prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible and responsive to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, flowing water.

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.

I want to sit down on the sand and look around and get dreamy; I want to see what spirits are peeking out of the faces of the roses.

I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and then foxes. I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.

Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace?

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough.