Quotes about Contemplation

It's okay to be an introvert, to seek out the quiet corners at a cocktail party, to care about quality, to have your mood be affected by your surroundings.

He looks upon sky and steppe and sees that which God has created. I look and see God Himself.

Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.

So long, therefore, as the object of the mystic's contemplation is amenable to thought, is something which he can "know," he may be quite sure that it is not the Absolute; but only a partial image or symbol of the Absolute. To find that final Reality, he must enter into the "cloud of unknowing"--must pass beyond the plane on which the intellect can work. "When I say darkness," says the same great mystic, "I mean thereby a lack of knowing....

That dreadful consciousness of a narrow and limiting I-hood which dogs our search for freedom and full life, is done away. For a moment, at least, the independent spiritual life is achieved. The contemplative is merged in it "like a bird in the air, like a fish in the sea": loses to find and dies to live.

Prayer, then, begins by an intellectual adjustment.

All artist of some measure contemplative.

Do not be content to skim through a chapter [of the Bible] merely to satisfy your conscience. Hide the Word of God in your heart.

Prayer should not be merely an act, but an attitude of life.

Nothing can calm our souls more or better prepare us for life's challenges than time spent alone with God.

The reason many... close their eyes while praying is to shut out the affairs of the world so that their minds can be completely concentrated on God... it certainly lends itself to the attitude of prayer.

Notwithstanding, in how many most petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and how often we give way, who can recount?