Quotes About Contemplation

If not, there was always whiskey.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." —Henry David Thoreau Walden, "The Ponds

he'd formed the idea that she was a solitary sort, not one to seek company when a good book lay at hand.

said grace. A bit of eyes-closed silence before a meal was probably a very good thing, no matter what thoughts might pass through her mind—gratitude, regret, contemplation, or nothing at all.

He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically.

But that is not to say that there might not be someone in the world - I do not say I have seen him yet - whom I would be a little afraid to look at sometimes - for fear that he might be looking sad - or lost - or thoughtful, or - what, you know, might seem the worst of all - brooding on some private anger or hurt and so not knowing or caring if I looked at him at all.

We always plan too much and always think too little.

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.

then what would I do?' She was getting herself into quite a

When something baffled him he found that if he kept on worrying it, he got no further, and lost his sense of proportion in the process. So when he came to a dead stop he indulged in what he called "shutting his eyes" for a little, and when he "opened" them again he habitually found a new light on things that revealed unexpected angles and made the old problem a totally new proposition. There

If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.

He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

Someone had said that if you thought about the unthinkable long enough it became quite reasonable.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor place to stay.

Privacy, precisely because it ensures that we are never fully known to others, provides a shelter for imaginative freedom, curiosity and self-reflection.

I can't "Think of a nicer way to commit suicde." That's good."I can't think of a better way to commit murder

She gave this some thought. "Oh,

Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself.

It's part of the role mountains play in our lives. To make us feel small. Humbled.

Your silence is a little black garden. You know everything there by heart.

We can never speak about God rationally as we speak about ordinary things, but that does not mean we should give up thinking about God. We must push our minds to the limits of what we could know, descending ever deeper into the darkness of unknowing.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.