#contemplation

It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation. ↗

— St. Thomas Aquinas

#men

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth. ↗

— Emile Durkheim

#contemplation #create #does #mere #our

Gillette--The best a man can get." I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help. My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred. I was a very long way from being the best a man can get. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#contemplation #love #realization #rehab #business

The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them. ↗

— Criss Jami

#contemplation #creativity #days #eat #expression

So many leaves have fallen on my life. Some settled nicely to rest, but most fell, withered to bitter cold and drifted on. But, after all that, I would brave all the coldness of humanity again for the sight of a few more beautiful yellow leaves falling on Aspen, and the birds.... ↗

— E.S. Lehman

#beauty

The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation. ↗

— Josef Pieper

#bartolome-de-medina #contemplation #happiness #st-thomas #life

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different. ↗

— Richard J. Foster

#christianity #contemplation #eastern-religion #meditation #religion

Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation. ↗

— Ray Simpson

#christianity #contempative-prayer #contemplation #eastern-religion #meditation

It was one of those days when I was thinking too much, too fast. Only it was more like the thoughts had a mind of their own and going all by themselves at a hundred miles a second, and I was just sitting back, feeling the growing paranoia inside of me. ↗

— Sasha Mizaree

#contemplation #control-issues #paranoia #thoughts #anxiety

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#contemplation #had #his #known #life