Quotes About Contemplation

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

I found the only time I had to shut down—to become mindful of nothing more than the present moment—was whenever I was peeing.

She had always been this way: interested-quite unnecessarily, some would say-in the secrets of strangers. When flying, she always chose a window seat so that when the plane took off or landed, she could look down on the tiny houses and imagine the lives of the people who inhabited them.

days slow as cattle grazing in a parched summer field.

The purpose of the practice of meditation is to experience the gaps. We do nothing, essentially, and see what that brings—either discomfort or relief, whatever the case may be. The starting point for the practice of meditation is the mindfulness discipline of developing peace. The peace we experience in meditation is simply this state of doing nothing, which is experiencing the absence of speed.

The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

For is prayer not disobedience? The questioning of God's order?

I don't know, maybe I just wanted to be alone. Maybe I just didn't want to be social because antisocial people have a whole lot less to lose.

A good book is hard to read, on account of how often it makes you stop and think.

that's where God watches us from: from a distance.

Thoran, watching him, stretched out his paws and allowed

she'd wanted to do was shut herself away — and think.

Every question, once it's formulated," she writes, "contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions

Sometimes it's good to be alone, because that's when your heart is really open to God.

I talk to myself, especially in the car.

I have epiphanies all the time, because I'm always thinking. I'm a thinker. I'm always writing poetry, I'm always coming to conclusions.

The graveyard shift was his favorite time of night.

I can move to the window and see the sky and the clouds above the tall old trees of the park as much as I want. That is the advantage of being alive; maybe not a great advantage, but still.

Ich kann mich ans Fenster stellen und über den alten großen Parkbäumen den Himmel sehen und Wolken, so­viel ich will. Das ist der Vorteil, wenn man lebt, vielleicht kein sehr großer Vorteil, aber immerhin.

Seduto su un macigno eroso dai venti, dal sole e dalle piogge degli uragani, Carter ne contemplò la cresta denudata, dorata dalla luce del tramonto. Grazie a Tutankhamon, quel regno del nulla si era trasformato in speranza: in esso, tutto restava immobile e immutabile, perché su quella terra degli dei nulla era cominciato nel tempo e nulla nel tempo sarebbe finito.

There are some things best contemplated in silence. Their proportions are so vast that speech cannot get around them.

The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts.

Who are you, Christina Olson? he asked me once. Nobody had ever asked me that. I had to think about it for a while.

A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings.