Quotes About Contemplation

Evincing the infinite— the size of your palm— what it holds is beyond you, curious, at hand.

As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are.

My thoughts are really all I think about.

It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate. The scattered particles of self - love, wood thrush calling, homework sums, broken nerves, rag dolls, one Phi Betta Kappa key, gold stars, lamplight smiles, night cries, and the shambles of contemplation - are collected for a split moment like scraps of shrapnel before they explode.

Dead drunk and cold-sober, he wandered out into the garden in the cool of the evening, awaiting the coming of the Lord.

When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why?

Anyway, we don't need to get into all that. My point is simply, no, King David, the heavens are not telling the glory of God (Ps. 19:1)—at least not without a lot of heavy theological lifting and perhaps a double bourbon. The heavens actually freak me out and make me wonder whether there is a God at all

The broader we cast our net, the deeper we wind up owning our own thoughts.

In other words, I believe that faith in the Creator is necessarily transrational (not antirational) and mystical. I try to remember that as I work through intellectual challenges—and I mean work through, not avoid.

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.

I have found that the prompts to adjusting my understanding of God are all around me—literally. The very heavens are shouting them, and the word they are shouting most clearly is "mystery.

Would being completely alone in a universe bring a sensation of closing limitations or infinitely expanding horizons with associated loneliness?

You are so much smarter than me, aren't you?" "No. I just think things through quicker, that's all." "If that's not a definition of smart, I don't know what is.

I haven't chosen to make an issue of faith.

Has it taught you to look at things different?' he asked. i thought, How does he know about all that? But i didn't have to ask him, because he just nodded toward his house. 'I bounce around them four walls a lot, Victor. I write some letters, I keep in touch with people. Putting your thoughts on paper, it makes you stop and notice stuff. Kind of slows you down.

Some thoughts have glue on them.----Smilla

When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.

I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me.

I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself. Cantor illustrated the concept of infinity for his students by telling them that there was once a man who had a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and the hotel was fully occupied.

if you restrict earthly things, you set up your thoughts free for the spiritual.

I sit there in total silence. It's always interesting to leave Europeans in silence. For them it's a vacuum in which the tension grows and converges toward the intolerable.

No le salen las cuentas porque piensa en Anna. Y se enfada. Pero vuelve a pensar en ella".

Wir verkümmern, lieber Herr Doktor, weil wir nur noch meinen und nicht mehr denken.

You rest now. Rest for longer than you are used to resting. Make a stillness around you, a field of peace. Your best work, the best time of your life will grow out of this peace.