Quotes About Contemplation

For in that little while Port William sank into me, becoming one with the matter and light, and the darkness, of my mind, never again to be far from my thoughts, no matter where I went or what I did.

In general, I weathered even the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.

All friends and comfortable with each other have ceased to talk, each occupied in that wide quiet with his own thoughts.

Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. — Wendell Berry, from "How To Be a Poet," Given . (Counterpoint March 1, 2006) Originally published 2005.

He is long past sleep now. His mind has begun to work on the agenda that it sets for itself, and he knows that he will not be able to stop it.

a place where thought can take its shape as quietly in the mind as water in a pitcher...

A window opening on nothing but the blank sky was endlessly attractive to me; if I watched long enough, a bird or a cloud would appear within the frame, and I watched with patience.

When we convene again to understand the world, the first speaker will again point silently out the window at the hillside in its season… and we will nod silently, and silently stand and go. Sabbaths 2000 II

Today I often said 'forest' to myself. Truth itself wanders through the forests.

Now begin Famines of thought and feeling.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.

There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing.

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm: That is the top of sovereignty.

emotions as a rule are in excess, and detain the mind in the contemplation of one object so that it cannot think of others."93 But "desire that arises from pleasure or pain which has reference to one or certain parts of the body has no advantage to man as a whole."94 To be ourselves we must complete ourselves.

Silence is the beginning of wisdom.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza; or, better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

This direct perception, this simple and steady looking-upon a thing, is intuition; not any mystic process, but the most direct examination possible to the human mind.

He had the philosopher's disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well.

He thought everything out carefully before acting; and therefore remained a bachelor all his life long.

His only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things; and since he himself is the essence of all things, the form of all forms, his sole employment is the contemplation of himself. 40 Poor Aristotelian God!—

Sometimes," said Thoreau, "as I drift idly on Walden Pond, I cease to live and begin to be.

Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa15—"Let us think no more about them, but look once and pass on.

Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silence.