Quotes About Contemplation

I was alone with myself, and we watched each other with steady, cold, inward eyes: the past and its consequence, the reality and its insubordinate dream.

She got up from the armchair, into which she had plumped with horror, and started to bustle about the room. Jane often bustled about the room, suddenly remembering to stir her life, as though it were kept simmering on a low flame. When this was done, with nothing apparently achieved, she came back and sat by the fire, her arms clasped round her knees.

Mas me concedam, ó deuses inexistentes e apesar disso cruéis, a consolação de falar uma hora com ela e de poder contemplar aquele rosto redondo de Lua Cheia.

I wondered how it might affect your way of thinking, if you always had a lighthouse in the corner of your eye.

I wonder whether that is how we get to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking out loud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see.

Perhaps nothing had happened. Perhaps everything had happened.

To hope until hope creates from its very own wreck the thing it contemplates.

to hope til Hope creates from its own wreak the thing it contemplates;

Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave?— [_30 Ianthe] doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death:- Shelley, Percy Bysshe (2011-03-24). The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete (Kindle Locations 317-319). . Kindle Edition.

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. - Epipsychidion

Stay up and listen to lightening. If there is no lightening around, stay up and listen to nothing. Just listen to the sheer joy of your thoughts trans-versing from one corner of your brain to the next.

Running always gave me time to think. It wasn't like practicing with a team, when I always worries if I was fitting in with everyone else. When I ran, I never thought about screwing someone else up or ruining the teams chance tow in. It was a solitary activity, and sometimes that felt nice.

Running always gave me time to think. It wasn't like practicing with a team, when I always worried if I was fitting in with everyone else. When I ran, I never thought about screwing someone else up or ruining the team's chance to win. It was a solitary activity, and sometimes that felt nice.

The best way to start praying, therefore, is actually to stop praying. To pause. To be still. To put down your prayer list and surrender your own personal agenda. To stop talking at God long enough to focus on the wonder of who he actually is. To 'be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him'.

Rob's story reminds me that how we listen is sometimes (always?) more important than what is said. Maybe that's why Jesus was forever asking people if they had ears to hear what he was saying. And I suspect it's also why the very first word of the great Benedictine Rule, which has guided monastic communities for 1,500 years, is this one little word: listen. Fifteen centuries of successful community built on the power of mere listening.

If we hurry into the holy without preparing our hearts, we will see things not as they are but as we are.

There's little point in lectio divina without the Holy Spirit's help.

He looked at her for a long moment, as if remembering unfinished conversations, and then went back to place some damp, slow-burning turf on the fire.

Sometimes when it looks like I'm deep in thought I'm just trying not to have a conversation with people.

The problem with deep thinking was it could lead to unpleasant conclusions.

I know I am God because when I pray to him I find I'm talking to myself.

mean anything." She seemed subdued, sad.

I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn't come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.

I only feel like myself when I am alone.