Quotes About Contemplation

That's the problem with being alive," she says, staring at the floor. "You've got to keep thinking of what to do.

Fuck the miracle of life, where do I sign up for a hysterectomy?

Everyone needs a place where they can go to just ponder for a while. Silence is important; it's the only time you can hear the whispering of truth.

This solitude that you can acquire and should cultivate, this opportunity for contemplation of which you should take advantage, will be useful to you only insofar as you can substitute for those questions posed by the student for the teacher, questions posed by yourself for yourself. - Advice to a Graduation

Years earlier, I might have scoffed, but I'd come to accept that, for Snowden's generation, they played no less serious a role in molding political consciousness, moral reasoning, and an understanding of one's place in the world than literature, television, and film. They, too, often present complex moral dilemmas and provoke contemplation, especially for people beginning to question what they've been taught.

I've heard it said that prayer is sometimes listening to yourself.

He thought himself stupid; the contemplation of grief always makes one stupid.

Always ask the turtle.

one writerly habit was describing everything I did, no matter how absorbing or how trivial, as if I were standing outside myself and watching.

him, listening to his slowing heartbeat, awash in feelings

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

Der Mensch muss bei dem Glauben verharren, dass das Unbegreifliche befreidlich sei; er würde sonst nicht forschen.

From early on I have suspected that the so important-sounding task "Know thyself" is a ruse of a cabal of priests. They are trying to seduce man from activity in the outside world, to distract him with impossible demands; they seek to draw him into a false inner contemplation. Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world - the world which he only comes to know in himself and himself only in it.

Ich ging im Walde so für mich hin, und nichts zu suchen, das war mein Sinn.

Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it.

Ko stalno mozga, znas, taj lici meni na bravce sto se, gonjeno zlim duhom, vrti u krug po pustopolju suhom, a okolo se socna ispasa svud zeleni

Tak, od razu ka?dy pomy?li: po co nam w to nos wtyka?? Wszak szyja le?y tu? ko?o nosa.

Non c'è niente da capire, basta guardare.

You cannot see everything with your eyes. Sometimes you have to look in here. - Christina

It is always best when discussing serious matters to do so around a teapot.

Chang believed that learning was dangerous and best suited for private contemplation, not something to put in the service of the highest bidder- as the Institute did, in thrall to the patronage of men with blind dreams of empire. Society was not bettered by such men of "vision" - though, if Chang was honest, was it bettered by anyone?

Compassionate emptiness. To me that meant a state of nonjudgmental receiving.

Often have I reckoned up on my birthday the increasing years — the feathers in the broad wing of time — and thought upon the sounding flights of youth...

There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.