Quotes About Contemplation

think and talk and act rather than react,

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible

Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the shutdown of communication with the outside world, but rather a process of coming to stillness.

A strange feeling comes over you, when you see the silent candle burning.

Don't flee from boredom. Go all the way into it; go all the way through the bottom of boredom!

Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he was trying to say that there is nothing, however humble, that does not imply the history of the world and its infinite concatenation of causes and effects. —JORGE LUIS BORGES, "The Zahir

I watch what I'm doing to see what I believe.

My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.

Il embrassa la mer d'un regard et se rendit compte de l'infinie solitude où il se trouvait

Life took on quite a special meaning in this early morning solitude.

Han lutade sig mot relingen, gav sin tribut till evigheten och spottade i havet.

Patience, he would have said. When stones start rolling down a slope, it's important not to start running after them right away. Stay where you are and watch them rolling, see where they come to a stop. That's what he would have said.

Henning Mankell

He stared down at the empty street and wondered why all city streets resembled each other at night. He

He took a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had hardly involved more than collecting a large number of question marks.

Forse diventare adulto significa rendersi conto della propria solitudine

Something that makes it possible for me to start thinking about the future again.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Même le grand Tolstoï, vous savez ce qu'il disait à Gorki? « Quand je serai à mi-corps dans la tombe, je dirai ce que je pense des femmes, et tout de suite je refermerai sur moi la pierre tombale! »

solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and God alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that God is actively present in our lives-- healing, teaching and guiding-- we need to set aside a time and space to give God our undivided attention. (Matt 6:6)