Quotes About Contemplation

For three years, ever since he had lived in Stanton, he had come here for his only relaxation, to swim, to rest, to think, to be alone and alive, whenever he could find one hour to spare, which had not been often. In his new freedom the first thing he had wanted to do was to come here, because he knew that he was coming for the last time.

There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden," Francisco said softly, "except one: the refusal to think.

She lay on her back, looking up at the sky, feeling no desire to move or think or know that there was any time beyond this moment.

He realized that he was thinking of his past, as if certain days of it were spread before him, demanding to be seen again.

had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.

No hay pensamientos malvados, señor Rearden —dijo Francisco suavemente—, excepto uno: negarse a pensar.

She sat at the window of the train, her head thrown back, one leg stretched across to the empty seat before her. The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while.

Questions give us no rest.

Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." "But I don't think of you." Toohey

I opened it the way we used to open Hafez, closing our eyes, asking our question and letting our finger rest somewhere at random. It opened to the page in the middle of Burt Norton,' beginning with the lines At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor/fleshless./ Neither from not toward; at the still point,there the dance/is.

Have you ever noticed, I said, cracking a nut, how strange it is when you look in the mirror of the opposite wall that instead of seeing yourself, you see the trees and the mountains, as if you have magically willed yourself away?

By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind.

Where there is no experience the wise man is silent.

The most important thing you need to do [in this job] is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking.

Where there is no experience, I believe the wise man is silent.

As I watched the two of them disappear into dusk, I realized I had never noticed which way the river ran.

I often think about that stretch of time spent sitting helplessly at the state dinner in Chile, contemplating the knife's edge between perceived success and potential catastrophe

I think I could sit here all night looking out over this lake. It's so peaceful, like a church without walls.

In fact, if you're not prepared to die when you're almost sixty, then I would say you've been falling down on your philosophical responsibilities as a grown-up human being.

What do you do when confronted with an inexplicable and alarming situation? Well, you can panic or give in to some other tyrannical emotion, like dread. Or you can escape into a book or a puzzle or, judging from the adults around me, a bottle of gin. But there is another possible response to the unknown and potentially menacing, and that is thinking.

The old man's white brows were pinched down over the bridge of his nose, "and there was grief in his eyes for the loss of one he had known for so many years—grief and something else Caris could not understand. The old man glanced up at the crowd behind them and said "Yes—perhaps.

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

To think is not always to see.

everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question.