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Contemplation Quotes

Browse 1219 quotes about Contemplation.

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Contemplation Quotes

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”

WorldSoulBodySpeakVoiceLosesSeaSolitudeEmbraceAwakeningWanderContemplationSpellsInwardVagueAbyssDisturbingChaoticWhisperingSeductiveInvitingMazesSensuousTumultMurmuring
Author:Kate Chopin
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“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

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Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.”

MindIdeasUniverseSpeakInterestCasesMeditationObjectsReaderOrdinaryUnderstoodNervousContemplationBuriedIntensityAdequate
Book:Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
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“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”

SoulReasonJoyGriefBehindsConditionsOrdinaryHeightContemplationConceptionSublimeGlimpseExaltedOrdinary LifeLoopholes
Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.”

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Book:Comedies of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)
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“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

KnowsMenHumansHeartMayTwoReasonInspirationSpiritDesireFaithKnowingMen And WomenCatholicWingsChristian InspirationalContemplationHuman HeartHuman SpiritFullnessLoving GodFaith And Reason
Book:Faith and Reason: Encyclical Letter Fides Et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship Between Faith and Reason
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“Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.”

IfsMenMeanReasonLightAgeSpiritualFatherChurchSinPathShareIllusionMiseryBurdenTemptationContemplationRejectionSubtleUrgesFrankAuschwitzUnrealitySpiritual LightChurch FathersDachau
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.”

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Author:Alice Sebold
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“I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys.”

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Book:Foucault's Pendulum
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“Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.”

HeartSoulWholeSpiritUniverseWaterPoorLordGraceOur LivesCreationDivineSourcePrayingPureFlowUniversalFollowingContemplationCharacteristicsAllowingMissionaryContemplatingGoing OutGatheringPoorestContemplativeDivine GracePure Water
Book:Mother Teresa: Contemplative in the Heart of the World
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“And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen.”

PeopleWellsMadeEndsMovingLinesDecisionMorningUnderstoodDecidedMissionsExpectedContemplationFearfulUnseenIllusoryFinish LineDecisions Made
Book:Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan
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“I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses”

WayHandsSeemsLyingWaterLove IsMorningClearSeaMissingLiftsContemplationAfternoonShellsJewelsStormySea Shell
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“No father, no son, no mother, no daughter should get so busy that he or she does not have time to study the scriptures and the words of modern prophets. None of us should get so busy that we crowd out contemplation and praying. None of us should become so busy in our formal Church assignments that there is no room left for quiet Christian service to our neighbors.”

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Book:Priesthood
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“Before examining this more carefully and investigating its consequences, I want to dwell for a moment in the contemplation of God, to ponder His attributes in me, to see, admire, and adore the beauty of His boundless light, insofar as my clouded insight allows. Believing that the supreme happiness of the other life consists wholly of the contemplation of divine greatness, I now find that through less perfect contemplation of the same sort I can gain the greatest joy available in this life.”

WantBelieveI CanMomentsLightJoyPerfectGreatnessDivineConsequenceGainsAvailableInsightSupremeAdmireThis LifeContemplationAttributesAdoreBoundlessPonderingExaminingInvestigatingClouded
Author:Rene Descartes
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“The name that no human research can discover-- But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”

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Author:T. S. Eliot
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