Quotes About Contemplation

In all the meditative traditions of the world, visualizations and imagery are used to invoke particular qualities of mind and heart.

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? LAO-TZU, Tao-te-Ching

The mountain image held in the mind's eye and in the body can freshen our memory of why we are sitting in the first place, and of what it truly means, each time we take our seat, to dwell in the realm of non-doing. Mountains are quintessentially emblematic of abiding presence and stillness.

Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.

Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around

but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude….

brooding on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs

John Adams had foreseen how central the president would be in American life. "His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people," Adams wrote in 1790.

When the word moderation becomes a dirty word we have some soul searching to do.

Plenty of philosophical men live in abstract regions, debating types and shadows. The rarer sort is the reader and thinker who can see the world whole.

Rather than say anything, I stood up and put my foot in the water, testing it. Testing the water, that is, not my foot. Though maybe it was my foot I was testing - whether it could tolerate the water's temperature. Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

Le auto sono come le persone. Ogni giorno andiamo in giro in mezzo alla ressa, corriamo di qua e di là, arrivando quasi a toccarci ma in realtà c'è pochissimo contatto. Tutti quegli scontri mancati. Tutte quelle opportunità perse. E' inquietante, a pensarci bene. Forse è meglio non pensarci affatto

Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.

The first thing that reading teaches us is how to be alone.

She pondered the arrangements of the paintings on a wall like a writer pondered commas.

You see more sitting still than chasing after.

You can think of me thinking of you, because that's what I'll be doing whenever you think of me.

the first lesson reading teaches us is how to be alone.

Il primo minuto della giornata lavorativa ci ricorda tutti gli altri minuti di cui è fatto il giorno, e non è mai bene pensare ai minuti come entità singole.

Time stops for the duration of a cigarette: when you're smoking, you're acutely present to yourself; you step outside the unconscious rush of life. This is why the condemned are allowed a final cigarette...it's a lot easier to leave the world if you're certain that you have really been in it.

Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about winning.

It's nice to be able to control my smell environment, and I can hear myself think better when it's quiet. It wasn't easy to become a person who's OK being alone on a Saturday night, but I did the work, I got there...

I may be dead tomorrow, I said to myself, but

The first thing that reading teaches us is how to be alone ~~Jonathan Franzen