Quotes About Contemplation

We can't underestimate the value of silence. We need to create ourselves, need to spend time alone. If you don't, you risk not knowing yourself and not realizing your dreams.

Dear Die-ary, I've been to heaven and hell...and I still don't know if there is a god or a devil. Still...it's something to write about.

Dr. Grant was right, the feeling no longer swallows her. Bela lives on its periphery, she takes it in at a distance. The way her grandmother, sitting on a terrace in Tollygunge, used to spend her days overlooking a lowland, a pair of ponds.

His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on the wall. He

To Travel without moving an inch.

He waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside. His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on the wall.

Only when things are reread, reexamined, revisited, are they understood: letters, photos, words in dictionaries.

Avoiding puddles, stepping over mats of hyacinth leaves that remained in place. Breathing the dank air.

Solitude demands a precise assessment of time, I've always understood this. It's like the money in your wallet: you have to know how much time you need to kill, how much to spend before dinner, what's left over before going to bed. But time seems different here. My walk took an hour, but to me it felt much longer.

Part of the way that I work is to observe.

Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

It is worth asking who decides what's an "obsession" and where it differs from meditation or the kind of deep dwelling on a subject we see in philosophy or the work of Robert Wilson, for instance?

My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.

Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which a man grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living.

The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

There are things that can only happen through you when you are still. Silence is often the most important work you can do.

The creative thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work.

Though we are involved in social work, our goal is to be contemplatives at the heart of the world. We are with Jesus twenty-four hours a day. We do everything for Jesus. We do it all unto Jesus.

I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

One way to be aware of it, to teach to yourself, is simply to read work aloud. I love reading the endings of books aloud when I start nearing the end.

Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what were doing;but it become a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of our life.

When I see my work in a gallery I often wonder how I got to this point. Sometimes the process of making the work feels like a blur, and I look at the work and wonder how I actually made it.