Quotes About Contemplation

Not a minister, he said, but I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear.

All right,' I said, 'what's the moral?' 'Forget it.' 'No, go ahead.' For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave ma a stare that lasted all day. 'Hear that quiet, man?' he said. 'That quiet - just listen. There's your moral.

I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy.

It's how I fill the time when nothing's happening, thinking too much, flirting with melancholy

Yes," Vader said, frowning. "Are you suggesting I was wrong?

No, of course not,' he agreed in a tone that implied he'd heard both the words I'd said and the words I hadn't said and would be mulling them over later on his own.

Perhaps," Thrawn said. "Still, it would be wise to think on it, General.

she also noted

I think it's great that you think about…your mother, quincies, the future, all kinds of things before you act. I respect that about you. But…I'm not like you. For me, 'taking care of myself' means doing what I can, when I can.

It was good to be alone. Really alone, without other people around you to let you imagine that your life had mingled with theirs. But that never was true. Even together, people were as solitary as cows in a field chewing their own cud.

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.

And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen.

The pedestrian is the highest and most mighty of beings; he walks for pleasure, he observes but does not interfere, he is not in a hurry, he is happy in the company of his own mind, he wanders detached, wise and merry, godlike. He is free.

it is while prone that ideas come. "A writer could get more ideas for his articles or his novels in this posture than he could by sitting doggedly before his desk morning and afternoon," writes Lin Yutang in his essay "On Lying in Bed.

Long periods of languor, indolence and staring at the ceiling are needed by any creative person in order to develop ideas.

The moon and the stars are soothing constants in an idler's life.

Their contemplation seems to reconnect us with a childlike sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe. They are literally other-worldly, and so remove us from the world and its cares; they lift us off the ground.

We feel small under the stars, yet paradoxically we feel more ourselves. We are who we are.

The lie-in—by which I mean lying in bed awake—is not a selfish indulgence but an essential tool for any student of the art of living, which is what the idler really is. Lying in bed doing nothing is noble and right, pleasurable and productive.

Look not for too long into the doughnut, lest the doughnut look into you.

The next morning, Malcolm thought long and hard before waking up, for he had come to recognise over the past quarter of a century that rather less can go wrong if you are asleep.

You don't need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don't even listen, simply wait. Don't even wait. Be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you. To be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. —Franz Kafka

But having acquired a taste for solitude, each of them spent days separate and alone, Leigh-Cheri in the attic, Bernard in the pantry. Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.

Twenty candles on a cake. Twenty Camels in a package. Twenty centuries under our belts and where do we go from here?