Quotes About Contemplation

He stood there on the high rampart for a long time that night, listening to the Missouri and staring at the stars. He wondered at the source of the waters, of the mighty Big Horns whose tops he had seen but never touched. He wondered at the stars and the heavens, comforted by their vastness against his own small place in the world. Finally he climbed down from the ramparts and went inside, quickly finding the sleep that had eluded him before.

I do my own habitual scan. I've already completed mental check-offs of the drunks, the painfully pierced, and there have been two iced coffees and a couple sharing a starfruit. Miriam is back in her spot. I go over and ask her, "If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you?

Don't say anything unless you can improve on the silence.

is so strange, this life we lead. We search for happiness, but so much is about survival. Existence. We try to manage expectations, but really we're treading water, wasting time, or contemplating lives we might have led. Pretty soon we're like every other godless, money-hungry, backstabbing, jaded, jealous human being, wishing we were richer, prettier, younger, luckier, or could do it all over again.

Audie could stare into the distance like he was looking across an ocean, or watching sparks floating above a campfire. He could make a cell seem like it had no walls.

but I have grown accustomed to living alone, having one-sides conversations and arguments with myself that I still manage to lose.

We sat on the terrace and talked as the sun slipped into the western sea and the stars filled the sky above us.

the library all alone, reading

I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them....But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

He enjoyed using a third of his time to do absolutely nothing.

To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky.

Who can talk you through this stuff before you decided to act on it?" "Well," said the president, "you won't like the answer, but the answer is me. Me. I talk to myself.

smiling. Alone, Mateo turned

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

My trade and art is to live.

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.

To philosophize is to doubt.

What about you, Michel, what are you going to do here?' The response closest to the truth was probably something like 'Nothing'; but it's always difficult to explain that kind of thing to an active person.

Should I just die? The decision struck me as premature.

What would it be like when I was fifty, sixty, older? I'd be no more than a jumble of organs in slow decomposition.

Gdy przejechaliÅ›my dwa kilometry, dotarÅ'o do mnie, ?e tym razem ju? naprawdÄ™ nie mam nic do czytania; do koÅ"ca wycieczki bÄ™dÄ™ musiaÅ' prze?y? bez absolutnie ?adnego tekstu drukowanego, którym bym siÄ™ mógÅ' odizolowa?. RozejrzaÅ'em siÄ™ dookoÅ'a, serce zacz??o mi szybciej bi?, Å›wiat zewnÄ™trzny wydaÅ' mi siÄ™ nagle o wiele bli?szy.