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Contemplation Quotes

Browse 1219 quotes about Contemplation.

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Contemplation Quotes

“Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.”

IfsCareVirtueElementsMadIntuitionPursuitContemplationLeisurePremisesReposeNot HappyUnrestFetters
Author:Josef Pieper
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“She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one - the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.”

YearsSoulBodySpiritStarsWaitingRoomsCenturyWindHundredSittingEssenceUnityPhilosopherContemplationWaiting Rooms
Book:The Beautiful and Damned: American Literature
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“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”

PeopleIfsWorldFeelsLooksWould BeNightSorrowSceneContemplationContemplatingWickednessMansfield ParkSublimity
Book:Illustrated Jane Austen - 8 Books in 1. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson. Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, P
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“I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.”

ThinkingShouldI CanMightJoyWaterEffortImpossibleSkyFieldsQuietRemainsDistanceDefeatDelightPossessionBonesFleshSnowLandscapeTriumphContemplationExistentialismAppropriateContemplatingCan NotForbiddenSlides
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. It came from his contemplation of the church, but it had its own clarity: the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time.”

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Author:Sebastian Faulks
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“It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.”

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Book:Confessions of a bohemian Tory: episodes and reflections of a vagrant career
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“MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.”

ThinkingMenWholeEarthLostAnimalHumourOughtSpeciesChiefsContemplationCanadaOccupationExtermination
Book:The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
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“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.”

MindDoeSaidFeelingsPoetryPowerfulEmotionSubjectsSpeciesDisappearReactionsContemplationPoetry IsSpontaneousKindredOverflowTranquillity
Book:Poems
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“We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of Science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.”

KnowsMenFeelsMayHas BeensFactsPainSciencePleasurePrinciplesKnowledgeStruggleObjectsParticularHe ManBuiltDifficultyPainfulConnectedContemplationDisgustingMathematicianChemist
Book:Lyrical Ballads and other Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (Including Their Thoughts On Poetry Principles and Secrets): Collections of Poetry which marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature, including poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Dungeon, The Nightingale, Dejection: An Ode
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“The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but "the true saint" goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.”

PeopleMomentsGodSpiritualSpiritualityLostSocialSleepPerfectForgetMankindEatingSellsSaintSellingOnenessContemplationBuyingNever ForgetCommerceSufiIntercourseMysticEcstaticSingle MomDevoteeSocial InteractionRecluseShunning
Author:Abu-Sa'id Abul-Khayr
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“Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.”

NaturalEducationKnowledgeLearningSeriousHealthyGardenExperienceSatisfactionEducationalContemplationLabourGardeningLongevityTranquility
Book:Silva: or, a discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesty's dominions
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“Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all - consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise - the traffic in the head. So many thoughts - trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.”

ThinkingSilenceMeditationCrazyHappeningsSittingTrainNoiseContemplationConsistentBusAirplaneSaneTrafficTruckRushingInconsistentDeep WithinEvaluationAloofUnconcernedInside And OutsideRushing InSilent Meditation
Author:Rajneesh
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“I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”

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Book:Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Over 120 Short Stories Including Rare Sketches From Magazines of the Renowned American Author of
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“Woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath forever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death.”

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Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“He who prohibited the making of a graven image would never himself have made an image in the likeness of holy things [i.e., by creating an image of them here on earth]. Nor is there at all any composite thing or creature endowed with sensation [made by God here on earth] like those in heaven. But the face is a symbol of the rational soul, the wings are the lofty ministers and energies of powers right and left, and the voice is delightful glory in endless contemplation.”

MadeSoulEarthFacesEnergyLeftHeavenVoiceReligiousHolyCreaturesCreatingGloryWingsEndlessRationalSymbolsMinistersContemplationSensationsDelightfulLoftyComposites
Author:Clement of Alexandria
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