Contemplative Quotes

Contemplative Quotes by Teresa of Avila, Timothy Radcliffe, Nicholas G. Carr, Lee L Jampolsky, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and many others.

Contemplative prayer [oraciГіn mental] in my opinion is

Contemplative prayer [oraciГіn mental] in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.
Teresa of Avila
We need the wisdom of women, and the experience of married people and parents, and the depth of the contemplative if we are to be formed as preachers.
Timothy Radcliffe
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.
Nicholas G. Carr
Inspirational Psychology includes the practical application of identifying the thoughts and mistaken beliefs that cause us pain, along with a contemplative practice to discover our true nature, which is Love.
Lee L Jampolsky
The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls – women’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.
Isaac D’Israeli
Since I was introduced to the practice of God’s presence, which in turn led me into the contemplative way, I have nearly always felt so rich, so blessed, so sincerely full of “enough.”…I believe it is on this robust, overflowing …contemplative pathway that one gains the joy and serenity to be generous.
Brian D. McLaren
From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.
Mary Wollstonecraft
The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.
Thomas Merton
Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call “meditation” or, in Christian terms, “contemplative prayer”. It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.
Sara Maitland
How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative?
Michael Arad
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.
Diana Gabaldon
It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.
Henri Nouwen
I was thinking about dying the other day the death thought came while I was sitting on the toilet peeing – that’s where I have my most contemplative thoughts.
Madonna Ciccone
We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer.
Richard J. Foster
Virginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It’s this quality that marks her best works.
Simone de Beauvoir
The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.
William Makepeace Thackeray
This may come as a surprise, given the nature of my job, but I am very guarded and contemplative. I’m not a naturally boisterous person.
Ed Helms
Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains, Winning from Reason’s hand the reins, Pity and woe! for such a mind Is soft contemplative, and kind.
Walter Scott
Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.
Mother Teresa
Witty, brooding, contemplative, explosive: take your pick.
Margo Jefferson
Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.
Bertrand Russell
The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.
Susan Sontag
One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.
Thomas Merton
Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer.
Johannes Tauler
You know, Monsieur, that, although the contemplative life is more perfect than the active life, it is not, however, more so than one which embraces at the same time contemplation and action, as does yours, by God’s grace.
Vincent de Paul
Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.
Thomas Merton
As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I consider myself a saint? How can I consider myself a contemplative? For the self I bother about does not really exist, never will, never did except in my own imagination.
Thomas Merton
The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
Thomas Merton
Most religions have always appreciated the extreme power of concentrated thought directed toward the benefit of others, especially when that person is practicing in solitude. That’s why they have contemplative orders.
Tenzin Palmo
All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone – and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.
David Whyte
Almost everyone who reaches a plateau where he or she is happy and comfortable says its because of finding balance between work, relaxation, exercise, socialising and family – plus some alone time to do something contemplative, creative, or educational.
Neil Strauss
Astronauts were not the impulsive daredevils so dear to the stereopticonloving public. They couldn’t afford to be. The hazards of the profession required an infinite capacity for cautious, contemplative thought.
Eric Frank Russell
I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.
Elizabeth Janeway
The book is the book and it will always be there. It’s a quiet ending. In the book it’s a contemplative ending which I think you could certainly do that in a movie.
Jane Goldman
One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.
Thomas Merton
But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.
Robert Benchley
[William Shawn] took over The Voice and tried to turn it into New York Magazine – very glitzy covers that promised practically nothing in terms of what was inside, very rushed paper anymore. You – not very contemplative, thoughtful or whatever.
Nat Hentoff
Could the purr be anything but contemplative?
Irving Townsend
Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It’s not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.
John Gierach
Because of his supernatural outlook, he could always work very calmly and effectively and finish things on time. This was a reflection of the reality of a harmonious and attractive blend of prayer and action. It clearly showed that the sensibilities of a contemplative soul in no way lead to agitation or nervousness.
Salvador Bernal
I guess when we’re happy, it’s easier to go with the flow, and when that happiness or joy is interrupted, that’s when we get contemplative and break out the guitar or pen and write about it.
Jeremy Fisher
To make films, you have to have boundless energy; you have to work and play with others really, really well, and I’m really a more contemplative kind of person. I like to sit at home and think, a lot.
Janet Fitch
Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject; no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create; and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.
G. H. Hardy
Before, I just spewed whatever it was I thought about everything. I tend to be more contemplative now
Anne Heche
One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.
Sam Harris
When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
Agnes Repplier
To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God.
Joan D. Chittister
Bassist Steve Uccello’s Symmetria is filled with cool and unique sounds, textures, and musical ideas, evoking an imagined atmosphere of open spaces influenced by Ry Cooder’s desert dusty roads as much as anything a bassist could conjure up. It fits a mellow, contemplative mood perfectly.
Bryan Beller
A contemplative should pay equal attention to concentration, energetic effort and equanimity, and not exclusively to one of these factors only.
Gautama Buddha
Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that’s all.
Gilles Deleuze
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.
Gwen John
Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.
Djuna Barnes
In my personal life, I am very contemplative.
Antonio Banderas
You’re not very good at being contemplative,” Milo said. “You always sound like some bad caricature of a philosopher, like those fortune cookies with ‘Confucius say’ or the Nietzsche guy from Mystery Men that’s always saying ‘when you walk on the ground, the ground walks on you.
Amanda Hocking
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
Nicolas Chamfort
I like to think of the landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its mulitplicity and endless variety, come in.
Gretel Ehrlich
When we are on the water, our contemplative impulses range from the intense to the nearly absent.
Paul Schullery
A lot of people do their practice. They meditate on compassion. Then they yell at people afterwards. That is not quite working. One of the things I try to emphasize is contemplative meditation – bringing your thought and intention into meditation.
Sakyong Mipham
Your mind is the greatest home entertainment center ever created. It requires contemplative silence to really discover who you truly are. You have immense talents, resources and abilities that are untapped.
Mark Victor Hansen
Meditation is a good starting point, or even a little bit of contemplative reflection, asking questions like: Who am I without my name or form? What is my purpose if there is one? What do I want out of my life? What am I grateful for? Just a little bit of reflection like that starts you on the journey.
Deepak Chopra
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.
Charles Lamb
In the active life all the vices are first of all to be removed by the practice of good works, so that in the contemplative life a man may, with now purified mental gaze, pass on to the contemplation of the Divine Light.
Isidore of Seville
The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.
Lewis H. Lapham
In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves.
Sue Monk Kidd
When you are deeply contemplative, you listen more carefully and understand things which cannot be articulated.
David A. Cooper
I am not a contemplative type, basically. I am much more of an action person and, as a consequence, I look forward to today and tomorrow and what’s breaking.
Walter Cronkite
The principles of my works… are the extinction of expression, permanent covering and contemplative tranquillity… My ideal is the completely dark picture, full of some overwhelming silence.
Arnulf Rainer
There’s no Biblical definition of contemplative prayer
Mike Bickle
In contemplative prayer we seek to become the person we are called to be, not by thinking of God, but by being with God. Simply to be with God is to be drawn into being the person God calls us to be
John Main
The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.
Gabriel Marcel
Science is a contemplative possession of reality through exclusion of all illusion, error and ignorance.
Georges Canguilhem
Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.
John Donne
Other forms of relating to God that have unique value in connecting us to Him include contemplative prayer and centering prayer.
Larry Crabb
To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
Robert Frost
Compassion will no longer be seen as a spiritual luxury for a contemplative few; rather it will be viewed as a social necessity for the entire human family.
Duane Elgin
For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.
Thomas Aquinas
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.
Francis Bacon
Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative
Aristotle
Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject.
G. H. Hardy