Quotes About Contemplation

It wasn't even 8:00 yet. Pretty early for such deep thoughts.

Computers are great for experimentation, but they're bad for deep thinking.

It was only when he was alone and he couldn't participate in the business of living that he tended to notice how lovely being alive was.

She is no longer speaking. Clearly, some response is required

Sam considered his French fries. "Are there other worlds?

She savored the quiet time alone at the podium. Alone, but with people. She looked into the audience, a sea of soft, shapeless neutrals, and she wondered how many of those women loved their husbands as much as she loved Aaron.

I think solitude chose me.

Walking, reading, watching the light change.

The walk north was exactly the right distance to make me walk out of myself....If you walked out of yourself going north, what did you do on the return walk? Enjoyed my emptiness. Or sometimes just congratulated myself for escaping.

day, she went directly to her chaise longue and left it only

No one spoke, The host, the guest, The white chrysanthemums. -Ry?ta

The garden is a world filled with secrets. Slowly, I see more each day. The black pines twist and turn to form graceful shapes, while the moss is a carpet of green that invites you to sit by the pond. Even the stone lanterns, which dimly light the way at night, allow you to see only so much.

Sometimes the house is so quiet I feel like the only noise that fills my mind is what I've created myself. Remembered conversations come back to me as if my friends and family were right here in the room.

Why do I go outside at one a.m. and search the stars as though I'd numbered them?

It was more or less late afternoon and I came over a hilltop and smack in front of me was the sunset.

Si uno se pone a pensar sobre ello, la meta última de la vida humana es algo que carece de importancia, es como un enjambre de abejas. Si uno lo deja estar acabada lamentándolo, pero si lo coges los insectos te picarán, por lo que es preferible dejarlo estar y observarlo sin tocarlo.

In common with other bookish types, I have always existed partly in the shadows. Skulked around the edges of things. Chosen quiet times and deserted places. Enjoyed the gloomy nooks and crannies of life. Maybe assumed that this was true for everyone and learned to have just enough of a daytime public face to pass, while I retreated into my own elsewhere. And this was something I always enjoyed: the ability to maintain a secret elsewhere life.

What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the "life of the mind": thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding.

In the study of Christian spirituality, real contemplation is actually an experience with a beginning and an end that Christians pass through. Contemplation is not generally considered a life-state that one exists in, so I'm adapting the word somewhat when I use it as a label for a spiritual temperament.

God will speak to us through creation if we'll only listen. If you feel like your time in front of books or listening to sermons has become stagnant, grab a coat, pick up a walking stick, and step outside into a school that never closes.

Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.

I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea.

You will find, my dear brother, that still waters run deep.

the best solutions are not immediate solutions.