Quotes About Contemplation

I go to my past in order to discern the future.

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

Something I've noticed as I get older is that I do think about the future more. It's all positive thinking.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

I have not the most definite designs on the future.

Asking me why I did or didn't do anything is generally pointless. How do I know? And asking me what I'll do in the future is even less rewarding.

The days start to be charged not because tomorrow you're leaving, but because in three weeks you're leaving. The future impinges. So you start to think about the frame.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Many people say to me, "I saw [Miral] and it really stayed with me. I woke up the next day and really thought about it, and have been thinking about it for awhile." That was my goal.

Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him.

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God

He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.

If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.

Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.

I'd rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.

Silence is God's first language.

I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.

In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; you played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill: walk sober off; before a sprightlier age comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage: leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.

It is easy to become a monk in one's old age.

In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages.

In this age of crowds in which I have determined to be a solitary, perhaps the greatest sin would be to lament the presence of people on the threshold of my solitude.

Age considers; youth ventures.

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.