A Quote by Thomas Merton

Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.

Thomas Merton

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Action Contemplation Spring Stream

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Thomas Merton
American - Author
January 31, 1915 - December 10, 1968

Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

Henri Nouwen

We come from God. As the tree from the root and the stream from the spring; that's why we should always be in contact with Him, as the trunk from the root. Because the stream dries up when it is separated from the spring and the tree dies when is uprooted.

Pythagoras

Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

Honore de Balzac

But this is that which will dignify and exalt knowledge: if contemplation and action be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been: a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.

Francis Bacon

Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation.

Robert McNamara

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action.

Midge Decter

There is a Life Stream that flows to you, and this is a Stream of clarity, a Stream of wellness, a Stream of abundance - and in any moment, you are allowing it or not. What someone else does with the Stream, or not, does not have anything to do with how much of it will be left for you.

Esther Hicks

The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.

Henry David Thoreau

A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Aristotle

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.

Josef Pieper

Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action.

George Gillespie

Yesterday for contemplation, today for action.

James Burgh

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.

Jacob Bronowski

We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of action.

Pope Gregory I

When like the patriarchs we learn to dig wells of virtue and spiritual knowledge within ourselves by means of ascetic practice and contemplation, we will find within us Christ the spring of life (cf. Gen. 26:15-18). Wisdom commands us to drink from this spring, saying, 'Drink water from your own pitchers and from the spring of your own wells' (Prov. 5:15). If we do this we shall find that the treasures of wisdom truly are within us.

Maximus the Confessor

A Quote by Thomas Merton

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