#contemplation

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#meditation #mind #understanding #business

There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#love #lucidity #nature #love

The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#god #loneliness #meditation #solitude #love

When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene. ↗

— Jane Austen

#nature #night #sorrow #sublime #wickedness

Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example. Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul, it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius reached by words or by example. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#faith #love #perfection #prayer #faith

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. ↗

— Nicolas Chamfort

#contemplation #less #life #live #makes

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation. ↗

— Simone Weil

#contemplation #degraded #faith #into #made

I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#created #i #life #service #style

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. ↗

— Meister Eckhart

#contemplation #harvest #plant #reap #shall

We want a state wise in its contemplation - just in its actions - and moderate in the reach of government into our lives. ↗

— Sonny Perdue

#contemplation #government #into #just #lives