Contemplation Quotations

Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

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

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.

But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.

I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.

Action and contemplation are...

There are few things more pleasing than the contemplation of order and useful arrangement.

If you learn music, you'll learn history. If you learn music, you'll learn mathematics. If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to learn.

It was the contemplation of God that created men who were equal, for it was in God that they were equal.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

Recitation of the Qur'an without contemplation and thought is futile.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

No person whose entire time is spent in the contemplation of limitation can demonstrate freedom from such limitation.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.

Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation.

Worship is adoring contemplation of God.

Comedy is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous.

Music is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit.

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.

Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.

Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfortunes and enjoy the happiness of others, and, consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors of religion.

If there is a special Hades for writers is would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

I know nothing more noble than the contemplation of the world.

I'm having the time of my life figuring out this next move.

I can recommend nothing better... than that you endeavor to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works of others.

Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.

The proper Science and Subject for Man's Contemplation is Man himself. [Fr., La vraie science et le vrai etude de l'homme c'est l'homme.]

In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.

The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

There is no art without contemplation.

Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

...music is the living God in our bosoms.

Human vision is endowed with the greatest Reality, since it comes to us directly from the contemplation of the Universe.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.

Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

The activity of God, which is transcendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation; and therefore among human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness.

Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.

Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation.

the contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation

To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.

In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.

One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.

Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell.

Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.

I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.

Contemplation is wisdom's best nurse.

The notion of education through handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life's activities.

Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.

Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.

Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent.

The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.

That which a man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

Better to illuminate, than merely to shine.

It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.

Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet.

Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.

Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

Self-contemplation is infallibly the symptom of disease.

Teach correctly... Find delight in contemplation.

It is in the contemplation of what you desire that you create what it is you want for yourself

The law of flying was not discovered by the contemplation of things staying on the ground.

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.