Top 184 Contemplative Quotes & Sayings

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.

How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative?

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

Before, I just spewed whatever it was I thought about everything. I tend to be more contemplative now

When we are on the water, our contemplative impulses range from the intense to the nearly absent.

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

A contemplative should pay equal attention to concentration, energetic effort and equanimity, and not exclusively to one of these factors only.

Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject.

From about 5 years old on, I was very contemplative and started to become constantly filled with nostalgia for the present moment and the feeling that it's always fleeting.

Americans are pragmatic; we want quick, clean, simple solutions to vast problems. The paradox is that we're a deeply confessional culture, but we're not often contemplative.

Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.

There's no Biblical definition of contemplative prayer

Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.

You know what I like about a beard? You can always look contemplative.

There's something very simple and contemplative about 'John Wick' - what is interesting is that it looks like it was based on an Akira Kurosawa movie.

A lot of my music is kind of contemplative, and somehow that always tends to tilt on the darker side. My inner conversation is apparently quite dark.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

All artists are of necessity in some measure contemplative.

Inevitably, there will be many aspects of culture that would benefit from a more reflective or contemplative approach to them.

I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.

Could the purr be anything but contemplative?

The Protestant wing of the western church, which is a tiny percentage of the Body of Christ, is nearly completely (98%) unaware that the Holy Spirit is restoring contemplative prayer-center stage-to the church The Holy Spirit is restoring this precious jewel (contemplative prayer) to the body of Christ. This is the God ordained means of attaining the fullness of God.

Meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God.

Witty, brooding, contemplative, explosive: take your pick.

In good writing, the contemplative and the exciting happen at the same time.

Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of itself: the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative but active.

We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer.

Science is a contemplative possession of reality through exclusion of all illusion, error and ignorance.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

Before, I just spewed whatever it was I thought about everything. I tend to be more contemplative now.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

As strenuous challenge or contemplative retreat, the parks and other units of the national lands offer welcome respite from the world, a safety valve for body and spirit.

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection.

Ideally, I'd like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption.

Astronauts were not the impulsive daredevils so dear to the stereopticonloving public. They couldn't afford to be. The hazards of the profession required an infinite capacity for cautious, contemplative thought.

Composing a piece of music is very feminine. It is sensitive, emotional, contemplative. By comparison, doing housework is positively masculine.

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

We become, after the arrival of the printing press in general, more attentive more attuned to contemplative ways of thinking.

Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.

This is the path of prayer-contemplative prayer, that is, as distinct from simple prayers of supplication and thanksgiving-which is a specific discipline of thought, desire, and action, one that frees the mind from habitual prejudices and appetites, and allows it to dwell in the gratuity and glory of all things. As an old monk on Mount Athos once told me, contemplative prayer is the art of seeing reality as it truly is; and, if one has not yet acquired the ability to see God in all things, one should not imagine that one will be able to see God in himself.

We need the wisdom of women, and the experience of married people and parents, and the depth of the contemplative if we are to be formed as preachers.

I was thinking about dying the other day the death thought came while I was sitting on the toilet peeing - that's where I have my most contemplative thoughts.

I guess when we're happy, it's easier to go with the flow, and when that happiness or joy is interrupted, that's when we get contemplative and break out the guitar or pen and write about it.

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

The principles of my works... are the extinction of expression, permanent covering and contemplative tranquillity... My ideal is the completely dark picture, full of some overwhelming silence.

This may come as a surprise, given the nature of my job, but I am very guarded and contemplative. I'm not a naturally boisterous person.

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.

When you are deeply contemplative, you listen more carefully and understand things which cannot be articulated.

The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.

Since I was introduced to the practice of God's presence, which in turn led me into the contemplative way, I have nearly always felt so rich, so blessed, so sincerely full of "enough."...I believe it is on this robust, overflowing ...contemplative pathway that one gains the joy and serenity to be generous.

In my personal life, I am very contemplative.

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

This mystical stream [contemplative prayer] is the Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality.

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.