Contemplative Quotes

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live. (Nicolas Chamfort)
What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking. View quote
Nicholas G. Carr
I cannot imagine why my vision will have some value in the world..and yet I know it will..I think I will count because I am patient and recueilli (contemplative) in some degree. View quote
Gwen John
A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. View quote
Charles Lamb
Our situations are arranged by higher agents to allow us to become tired of trying to manipulate the material energy. Due to not being properly appreciative of the beauty of relationship with the Lord, humankind is given a temporary arena in which to act out our desires. This environment is designed to frustrate, disgust, and disappoint us, to make us contemplative and introspective. Ultimately it is meant to drive us away from the temporary world in favor of that which is eternal. This is arranged for us to finally realize that our happiness lies not in dabbling with the material energy but in serving the Lord unconditionally, thus becoming whole again. View quote
Bhakti Tirtha Swami
Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science. View quote
Richard Courant
Before, I just spewed whatever it was I thought about everything. I tend to be more contemplative now. View quote
Anne Heche
He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like. View quote
Derek Jacobi
How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative? View quote
Michael Arad
Baseball is meant to be a contemplative game. They play music to draw young people to the game. If young people can't come to the game without music, then they should stay home. View quote
W. P. Kinsella
Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion ... who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who ... can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters ... Milton was not one of these. He had lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and worth, [not] to be tempted by such idle baits. (William Hazlitt)
The supreme aristocrat is not the feudal lord in his castle but the contemplative monk in his cell. View quote
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
The whole question of pictures made to order is a darn peculiar form of merchandize. Buyers seem to like the tiresome MP blue, for one thing, and girls having a pleasant chat for another. They must look pleasant like Daybreak and Garden of Allah and not contemplative like Hilltop, Stars and Dreaming, which are not so popular .... There are countless artists whose shoes I'm not worthy to polish - whose prints would not pay the printer! ... I'm beginning to doubt my judgment! View quote
Maxfield Parrish
He told me, he was just in the same situation [i. e. in a garden], as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to him self. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earths centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. View quote
William Stukeley
I am not a Jacob wrestling with God, but a Job lying on his dung-hill. I have assimilated Western thought and its clarity, but, in fact, I am solidly rooted in the passive Eastern nature and remain rebellious to any action. The book, the cell, the presence at the altar and at lengthy church ceremonies, and above all the solitude and withdrawal from the world -- this is the atmosphere which suits me; it is there that I feel like a fish in the water. I cannot lead an active and contemplative life at the same time. You know how much I love the Jesuits, but their ideal (to unite contemplation with action) is not within my means. View quote
Leonid Feodorov
When someone forgets himself, this by no means makes him altruistic; when a thinking person forgets himself, he immediately also forgets his fellowman, he loses himself and his humanity by becoming engrossed in his subject. Thus he is in a sense more contemplative than a feeling person. View quote
M. C. Escher
These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities - of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
If the soul has not reached the state of unitive love, it is necessary for it to make acts of love, as well in the active as in the contemplative life. But when it has reached it, it is not requisite it should occupy itself in other and exterior duties - unless they be matters of obligation - which might hinder, were it but for a moment, the life of love in God, though they may minister greatly to His service; because an instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done. View quote
John of the Cross
This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her? She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it. View quote
Diana Gabaldon
We wouldn't attempt to meditate, or engage in any other contemplative practice, if we didn't feel that something about our experience needed to be improved. But here lies one of the central paradoxes of spiritual life, because this very feeling of dissatisfaction causes us to overlook the intrinsic freedom of consciousness in the present. As we have seen, there are good reasons to believe that adopting a practice like meditation can lead to positive changes in one's life. But the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self-and to seek such freedom, as though it were a future state to be attained through effort, is to reinforce the chains of one's apparent bondage in each moment. View quote
Sam Harris
But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative-no family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soul-some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus. (Baruch Spinoza)
If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind; if this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the objections which lie against it? View quote
David Hume
I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province. View quote
Francis Bacon
I ... understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions ... Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life. View quote
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The myth of Canada, its hidden story, is of a contemplative country, a place of inwardness, where people can question the idea of nationhood and ponder what values we wish to see expressed and achieved, and what solitudes of identity and reverie we wish to preserve. View quote
B. W. Powe