Quotes about Contemplation

If there were one word that could act as a standard of conduct for one's entire life, perhaps it would be 'thoughtfulness.

Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous.

If the world itself is a horror then there is nothing to fix and the only thing you could be protected from would be the contemplation of it.

He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He'd notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.

He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the smalldoer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it.

The moon was already a quarter ways up. All but day bright. He felt like something in a jar.

What should give you pause is that suicides scales with intelligence in the animal kingdom and you might wonder if this is not true of individuals as well as species.

If you think that the dignity of your life cannot be cancelled with the stroke of a pen then I think you should think again.

The old man lay dim and bleared in his brass bed. Suttree leaned back in the chair and pushed at his eyes with the back of his hand. The day had grown dusk, the rain eased. Pigeons flapped up overhead and preened and crooned. The keeper of this brief vigil said that he'd guessed something of the workings in the wings, the ropes and sand-bags and the houselight toggles. Heard dimly a shuffling and coughing beyond the painted drop of the world.

The army leaves me time to think, and saves me from the battle of life.

In the end, the soul is alone brooding on the face of the uncreated flux, as a bird on a dark sea...

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me.