Quotes About Contemplation

Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis but first of all by living.

To praise the contemplative life is not to reject every other form of life, but to seek a solid foundation for every other human striving. Without

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.

Thomas Merton

The function of a university is to teach a [person] how to drink tea. not because anything is important, but because it is usual to drink tea, or for that matter anything else under the sun. And whatever you do, every act, however small, can teach you everything, provided you see who is acting.

The function of a university is to teach a [person] how to drink tea, not because anything is important, but because it is usual to drink tea, or for that matter anything else under the sun. And whatever you do, every act, however small, can teach you everything, provided you see who is acting." ? Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton On Prayer

Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge.

Even the desire of contemplation can be impure, when we forget that true contemplation means the complete destruction of all selfishness—the most pure poverty and cleanness of heart.

The one thing that seems to me morally certain is that this was really a grace, and a great grace.

Gerçek anlamda derin düÅŸünme; psikolojik bir hile deÄŸil, teolojik bir lütuftur.

The very first step to a correct understanding of the Christian theology of contemplation is to grasp clearly the unity of God and man in Christ, which of course presupposes the equally crucial unity of man in himself.

your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ!

Contemplation does not arrive at reality after a process of deduction, but by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out into the mystery of God. For

For the monk searches not only his own heart: he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have left it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.

Meditation for them consisted in making the words of the Bible their own by memorizing them and repeating them, with deep and simple concentration, "from the heart." Therefore the "heart" comes to play a central role in this primitive form of monastic prayer.

The only answer to the problem is grace, grace, docility to grace. I was

it is much better to desire God without being able to think clearly of Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will.

In Silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

The Christian solitary does not seek solitude merely as an atmosphere or as a setting for a special and exalted spirituality. Not doesn't he seek solitude as a favorable means for obtaining something he wants--contemplation. He seeks solitude as an expression of his total gift of himself to God.

What a strange thing! In filling myself I had emptied myself

live," said Paul

It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being.

All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.