Quotes About Contemplation

Gedankenexperiment

some darting about for Earthly advantage, others attending to the faraway deeds of Angels, still others lost in contemplation of what it all means.

Kathree sat alone on the beach, hugging her knees and watching the woman do what she did and wondering what events in her life had caused her to shift into what she was now, so tall, so lovely, so watchable. She did not have the manner of one who had been born beautiful, which made Kathree suspect that she had come by it through some kind of personal disaster.

Then he got a look on his face as if he were thinking. Daniel had learned, in his almost seventy years, not to expect much of people who got such looks, because thinking really was something one ought to do all the time.

He finds a ramp that leads down to the beach and lets gravity draw him towards sea level, gazing to the south and west. The water is pacific and colorless beneath a hazy sky, the horizon line is barely discernable.

Avi thinks this over before issuing the carefully engineered statement: "It is as true as it ever was.

There is a saying, 'Turtles all the way down,' which I would not expect you to understand, but the point of it is that to speculate along these lines is idle

Truth and God are found in the same place: in the silence.

The first step is learning to monitor your thoughts; to think about what you are thinking about.

Your refusal to contemplate your own death leads to your refusal to contemplate your own life.

If you do not go within, you go without.

And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.

Dr. Barney stared at me, his lips puckered. What was he so serious about? Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it?

How can you live without stars? What keeps you from thinking about yourself all the time?

Hold on a second. I can talk,' I say. 'Guys.' I look at all three of them in turn. 'One thing that they do in here is give you a lot of time to think. I can't explain it; once you come in, time just slows down-' 'Well, you don't have any interruptions, that's probably it-' 'Also I think the clocks are a little off-' I wave my hand. 'Point is, you have time to think about how you got here...

The Cycling.'" "Going over the same thoughts over and over. When my thoughts race against each other in a circle.

I thought . . . you haven't really lived until you've contemplated suicide. I thought like it would be good to have a reset switch, like on the video games, to start again and see if you could go a different way.

I occasionally wonder if the entire Universe is nothing more than a snow-globe on the living room mantle of a space alien.

The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious.

My confidence that there is a loving God who cares at all for your health or your longevity, based on what I see in the physical universe, is so low that it's not something that I would spend any time investing in, to try to explore any further about whether or not it's true. I'll let other people do that exploring. Read in the New Yorker, sometime in March, 2015

At one time or another every one of us has looked up at the night sky and wondered: What does it all mean? How does it all work? And, what is my place in the universe?

She turned off the water, and for a moment she was a newcomer again, alone in the house after George had gone to work.

It was possible to be struck dumb by all sorts of emotions, not only surprise, and as they drove back toward Pittsford, Amina thought that there ought to be a whole set of words to encompass all those different varieties of silence.

nice day, i said. and i put one of the raspberries in my mouth. is it? i looked up at the sky. the sun is there, i said, only it's hid by a cloud. you ever see the bad in life? he asked. i'll have time to think about that, i said, when i'm dead.