Quotes About Contemplation

Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things.

Viciously, then, I lock my door. The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside Ushers in evening rain. Once more Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Alone now, in my dark room, The pebbles cease to drop into the rocking pool And gradually the surface quietens Reflecting image of darkest peace and silence. No questions catch the clothes But only as it were a spreading Draws all threads to their finished pattern And you are pieced together bit by bit Set against the evening Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold from "(A Study in Light and Dark)

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary into what it is… a moment in time; an observed fragment of eternity.

To be alone then, hearing only breeze, your own breath rising to answer with words you didn't know you knew the pale questions of the full moon, to know for the first time you are without a name or number.

John was not a logician, but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition.

Thus, when we look out at the world, we are nature gazing upon itself.

music gives me a structure to think about how the world could possibly be.

Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment.

A habit of solitude in early childhood is not easily broken. Indeed, it may prove lifelong.

We are alone in the world. I've never enjoyed the rain so much.

fundamental truth: that in the end, death is only a matter between you and yourself?

Je me souviens d'instants d'une grâce indépassable dans une solitude insondable.

Je comprends alors qu'on ne voit pas les choses quand on regarde les êtres.

Je songe que l'énigme de sa mort est ce qui me divertit du mystère de sa vie.

Amaba el tiempo hasta el punto de quedarse viéndolo pasar

Mon cher et vieux maître Limmat, que faisiez-vous donc là, derrière cette table pareille à celle d'un tribunal ? Vous aussi vous saviez donc ?

Il le veilla toute la nuit plus qu'il ne le surveilla. Il n'était plus à surveiller. Il n'était plus rien.

C'est pas toujours facile, le soir, d'entrer dans une chambre et de s'asseoir au bord du lit pour défaire tranquillement ses lacets et ensuite se glisser dans les draps et regarder le plafond d'un coeur léger.

As I grew older, I frequently turned to the sky for comfort, and being reminded of my slight significance within the context of the vast and enigmatic universe, I was comforted.

The whole place seemed wrapped in isolated autumn silence.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life," Thomas Merton, one of its sovereign explorers, pointed out, "is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

So much of our lives takes place in our heads - in memory or imagination, in speculation or interpretation - that sometimes I feel that I can change my life by changing the way I look at it.