Quotes About Contemplation

I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who know me go, 'Oh yeah, Mailman, she's gone into her cave again.' I'm like that, a bit of a hibernating bear. Like that crocodile that just sits there in the water and doesn't do much. I was always a bit of a dreamer as a kid, so that hasn't changed.

The whole question of God and what God is, and whether it's a blond guy with a beard, I don't know... I don't know that. Do I believe that there's something greater at work than the sum of humanity? Yeah, I think so.

I used to have to force myself to go, okay, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing and then all of a sudden a thought of some where could come in. Now I can just focus and not think about anything. So, yeah, I guess I do that a lot.

The spring, summer, is quite a hectic time for people in their lives, but then it comes to autumn, and to winter, and you can't but help think back to the year that was, and then hopefully looking forward to the year that is approaching.

When I'm 60, maybe, I'll look at my pile of papers and wonder, What really happened that year?

I tend to go to bed really early on New Year's Eve. Then I wake up early, drive up while it's still dark, and hike out somewhere beautiful to watch the sunrise. I just take a couple hours and have a post-mortem of the year.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

I feel like there should be a statute of limitations on scoring political points on the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina.

I'm a somewhat isolated person in my own way, or I move along a little trail, I go this place, I go that place. It's not like I'm varying my exposure.

When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were.

I was an observer. I liked to listen rather than openly express myself. This trait is something that I've retained over the years.

When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.

I think my life has been transformed by the ability to take things that exist in the world and look at them more closely. I think that's what art does at its best: it allows us to slow down.

A thought is an idea in transit.

Transitions are a time for reflection, and a time for looking forward.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

When I spoke to her, I had the feeling that her thoughts had been nourished in wide-open spaces where talk was sparse and silence ruled.

went back to her crossword puzzle - still looking for a five-letter word that meant "to believe in something without evidence". She sat down in the old wooden rocker. She was patient; it would come to her – in time – in the Lord's good time. She closed her eyes, and she rocked.

A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

An unconsidered life is not one worth living.