Quotes About Contemplation

What bothers me about TV is that it tends to take our minds off our minds.

A book is full of ideas. You just live with what you read for so much longer. A lot of the times, nowadays, with a movie or TV show, it's like, 'Oh, it's entertainment!' And you never think about it again.

I don't tweet.

I think a lot before tweeting. I show it like I don't, but I do. Sometimes I don't mean it, sometimes I mean it, and sometimes I like to provoke a reaction from people. I enjoy reactions from them.

As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.

After twelve years in prison, I think I have listened to the radio maybe 30-40 times in all, and only when I have been without even a TV.

In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years, I did nothing else. Every holiday, I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don't need a long beard or a sari. It's meant to bring you to yourself. It's as easy as that.

I think it's natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently - whether they went well or whether they went terribly.

I hadn't really thought about politics as a career in my twenties or early thirties.

The thought of having sclerosis of the synapses is alarming. I wonder if in later life I will pay the price for having overstimulated my mental apparatus in my twenties.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

I don't look at a knife the way I used to. I'm more aware of what it is. I think twice. This is a key finger. It's in every chord.

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

I think I should be here alone to rethink the world, I do. I want these lesser humans gone.

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.

One night I looked down and my rosary beads were glowing. And I realized that I did not want to see the blessed Virgin - I was terrified.

When I'm in my 50s, I kind of think I'll want to be in a garden.

There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.

I know a lot of people that don't pray or anything, and that's fine - but I need to. I don't even want to call it prayer, I just want to call it talking to something bigger than me.

It is in the contemplation of what you desire that you create what it is you want for yourself

He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

Zen taught me how to pay attention, how to delve, how to question and enter, how to stay with -- or at least want to try to stay with -- whatever is going on.