Quotes About Contemplation

Students, when you want to say something, think about it three times before you say it. Speak only if your words will benefit yourselves and others. Do not speak if it brings no benefit.

In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.

Think very carefully about what you want in life. Reckon with the risks.

Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

We're not a political band. We don't want to tell people what to do or what to think. We just want to tell them to think.

Contemplate thy powers, contemplate thy wants and thy connections; so shalt thou discover the duties of life, and be directed in all thy ways.

God deliver me from people who are so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation, come what may.

There are times in my life when I just want to be by myself.

When no one is looking, I swallow deserts and clouds and chew on mountains knowing they are sweet bones! When no one is looking and I want to kiss God, I just lift my own hand to my mouth.

I have no desire for any type of introspection at all. I don't ever ask myself any questions. I don't want answers.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

I reject get-it-done, make-it-happen thinking. I want to slow things down so I understand others better.

I'm a grenade, I just want to stay away from people and read books, and think.

God knows, we don't want prayer.

the Christian monastic Anthony the Abbot referred to "created nature" as a "book," one always at his "disposal" whenever he wanted "to read God's words.

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.

in Jeffrey S. Cramer. Walden: A fully annotated edition. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2004

Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo. HarperCollins: New York

ambivalence, it turns out, is an unavoidable companion in the search for a new dharma):

For a period of time after this discovery, Gandhi walked many miles each day, repeating the mantra to himself until it began to coordinate itself with the movement of his body and breath. The practice not only calmed him, but brought him into periods of bliss and rapture—and, as he said, "opened the doorway to God." Rama, Rama, Rama. Eventually, the mantra developed a life of its own within him. The mantra began to chant itself, arising spontaneously whenever he needed it.

Sometimes, the most profound of awakenings come wrapped in the quietest of moments.

Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.

He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.

We need not be afraid of silence; sometimes it can help us listen to our precious inner messages.