Quotes about Contemplative

The contemplative life not only does not exclude, but requires, the active life.

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.

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.

THE most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

The contemplative is not isolated in himself, but liberated from his external and egotistic self by humility and purity of heart—therefore there is no longer any serious obstacle to simple and humble love of other men.

kind of prayer we here speak of as properly "monastic" (though it may also fit into the life of any lay person who is attracted to it) is a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of "the heart.

The Christian life — and especially the contemplative life — is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

His words never rushed but were selected, chewed over, released into the air as if the best choice possible had been made.

I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.

Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth-claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience. Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things. And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing.

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.

I've been such a private person.