Quotes About Contemplation

Mercy?" "Just a minute," I told Adam. "I'm in the middle of a revelation.

Asil left Bran alone with his thoughts then, because if he stayed, Bran would argue with him. This way, Bran would have no one to argue with but himself. And Asil had always credited Bran with the ability to be persuasive.

She would have to learn to accept that he was a man of his word. In the meantime he would give her something to think about.

But this is the slowed-down season held fast by darkness and if no one comes to keep you company then keep watch over your own solitude. In that stillness, you will learn with your whole body the significance of cold and the night, which is otherwise always eluding you. — Patricia Fargnoli, closing lines to "Winter Grace," Winter (Hobblebush Books, 2013)

I already know (or believe—which comes to the same thing in my Catholic worldview) that daydreaming doesn't make things up. It sees things. Claims things, twirls them around, takes a good look. Possesses them. Embraces them.Makes something of them. Makes sense. Or music. How restful it is, how full of motion. My first paradox.

To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die

head, and then

Some words may make you happy, some may make you sad. Maybe some will make you angry. What I hope. . . what I hope is that something will whisper in your ear.

there are some things for which there are no answers, no matter how beautiful the words may be.

Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.

thousand details aligned in his head—things he'd see to, people he'd call, decisions he'd make—to

Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.

All I could do was think. You try doing nothing but thinking for a few months. It's a very useful exercise for shaking some of the chaff out of your life.

You can see a lot of the world from a curb.

Standing with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet.

But sometimes you have to wait for an answer to come to you. Especially when the questions are difficult ones.

Réchauffe ta parole avant de la dire. Parle dans ton cœur. Savoir parler c'est savoir retenir sa parole. Parler vraiment c'est d'abord astiquer du silence. Le vrai silence est un endroit de La Parole. Écoute les vrais Conteurs.

I'm a hopeless conversationalist. I'd always rather listen.

The feeling of the morning after the night before is not a sensation endured by the dissolute only: every morning, for every human being, is in some sort a morning after the night before...

The soul needs feeding - where "feeding" signifies heeding.

We cultivate soul by seeking depth, interiority, and connectedness - in short, by exercising imagination.

Remember, you're not doing nothing—you're taking action through nonaction.

How enjoyable, how very enjoyable and luxurious it is, suddenly to emerge from the stern labyrinth of fact onto these dawn-lit uplands of surmise!

When he was younger, he used the slightest opportunity to slip away from people, without his being able to understand very clearly why he did so: a longing to break free and to breathe in the fresh air?