contemplation

By thinking of things you could understand them.

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture.

A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time__he stuff of life.

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.

I__e always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It__ quiet and dark__he perfect time for creativity.

To broaden one's prospective is to push back the swirling winds of ignorance.

An individual excels where the institution fails.

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.

The greatest prayers that I could ever utter come from the heart. And when I pray that way, I rarely need to open my mouth. Therefore, maybe I should think about talking less.

He sat watching what went forward with the quiet outward glance of healthy old age.

Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.

Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.

Many solemn nights Blond moon, we stand and marvel...Sleeping our noons away

What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object.

I__e come to realize the power of reflection, the kind that comes only from contemplation. Synchronizing ourselves with the awe-inspiring environment around us is indeed a tremendous feat that, at some point or another, we must all undergo, alone yet together.