Quotes About Contemplation

Close the book. Read the title. Read the title again. Nuff said.

dwell in stillness and to observe without reacting and without judging.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." His deepest conviction: "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts…. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

You certainly have to be ready for meditation. You have to come to it at the right time in your life, at a point where you are ready to listen carefully to your own voice, to your own heart, to your own breathing

When we spend some time each day in non-doing, resting in awareness, observing the flow of the breath and the activity of our mind and body without getting caught up in that activity, we are cultivating calmness and mindfulness hand in hand.

The entirety of our mind, on the other hand, is by its very nature deep, vast, intrinsically still and quiet, like the depths of the ocean.

The virtues of getting up early have nothing to do with cramming more hours of busyness and industry into one's day. Just the opposite. They stem from the stillness and solitude of the hour, and the potential to use that time to expand consciousness, to contemplate, to make time for being, for purposefully not doing anything. The peacefulness, the darkness, the dawn, the stillness - all contribute to making early morning a special time for mindfulness practice.

we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in; long enough to actually feel the present moment, to see it in its fullness, to hold it in awareness and thereby come to know and understand it better.

Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives.

We live immersed in a world of constant doing. Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing, or, put otherwise, with the world of being.

Mostly we run around doing. Are you able to come to a stop in your life, even for one moment? Could it be this moment? What would happen if you did?

When you silence your mind, faith walks in.

Consider every choice carefully, no matter how small, for it will affect the bigger decisions you make.

I know it does not matter that I do not understand.

Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and more rarely sustained contemplation.

Religious faith indeed relates to that which is above us but it must arise from that which is within us.

He was silent for a moment, staring out the window into the rain; I imagined he was contemplating the fact that his family's presence was turning the locals into giant dogs.

My son has taken up meditation - at least it's better than sitting doing nothing.

Sometimes I like [being famous], sometimes I don't. I've always been a people watcher. I like to go to malls and just sit, and I can't do that very easily anymore.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.

But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it.

Silence is one of many forms of prayer.

He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone.