Quotes About Contemplation

I got some coffee and stood looking at the sky.

I stared up at the plaster ceiling as I had done as a child. It seemed to me that the vibrating patterns overhead were sliding into place. The mandala of my life.

I came to experience a different kind of prayer, a silent one, requiring more listening than speaking.

I awoke with a mild hangover.

I thought about it so much I could almost enter it: the Café Nerval, a small haven where poets and travelers might find the simplicity of asylum.

What's your life philosophy, Leo?" "I haven't figured it out yet." Abbey considers this. "'I haven't figured it out yet' is not a bad life philosophy

Libraries aren't in the real world, after all. They're places apart, sanctuaries of pure thought. In this way I can go on living on the moon for the rest of my life.

Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one man's solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude

Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.

I was looking for a quiet place to die.

What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook?

For it is only in the darkness of solitude that the work of memory begins.

Tus pies descalzos en el suelo frío cuando te levantas de la cama y vas a la ventana. Tienes sesenta y cuatro años. Afuera, la atmósfera es gris, casi blanca, no se ve el sol. Te preguntas: ¿Cuántas mañanas quedan? Se ha cerrado una puerta. Otra se ha abierto. Has entrado en el invierno de tu vida.

He read many books, he looked at paintings, he went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television in the winter he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city—never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.

Estaba buscando un sitio tranquilo para morir

Your bare feet on the cold floor as you climb out of bed and walk to the window. You are sixty-four years old. Outside, the air is gray, almost white, with no sun visible. You ask yourself: How many mornings are left? A door has closed. Another door has opened. You have entered the winter of your life.

murió de neumonía, o lo que es lo mismo, murió de viejo: una muerte envidiable, a tu juicio, una vida vivida hasta bien entrada la novena década y luego, en lugar de la electrocución por un rayo, la oportunidad de asimilar el hecho de que te vas de este mundo, la ocasión de reflexionar durante un tiempo, para luego quedarse dormido y entrar flotando en el reino de la nada.

Bibliotheken befinden sich schließlich außerhalb der realen Welt. Es sind abgeschiedene Orte, Zufluchtsstätten des reinen Denkens. Auf diese Weise kann ich für den Rest meines Lebens auf dem Mond weiterleben.

There's a certain quixotic calm to an empty school hallway.

It's not just me. When you ask people, "How often, if at all, do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?" or "In the bigger picture of your life, how personally significant and meaningful to you is what you are doing at the moment?," parents—both mothers and fathers—say that their lives have more meaning than those of non-parents.

We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well…How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself.

Saint John of the Cross gave the following advice: "Enter into your heart and labour in the presence of God who is always present there to help you. Fix your loving attention upon Him without any desire to feel or hear anything of God.

A half-hour, stolen from the day's activities or the night's rest, set apart for meditation in his own house, will in the end yield a good result.