#contemplation

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#dreaming #flowers #gardens #les-miserables #thinking

It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going? ↗

— Carl Sandburg

#introspection #life #self-reflection #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

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

Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect. ↗

— René Descartes

#faith #joy #experience

Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor. ↗

— Mother Teresa

#life

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

It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment. ↗

— Samuel Alexander

#added #contemplated #contemplation #course #enjoyment

But unfortunately Locke treated ideas of reflection as if they were another class of objects of contemplation beside ideas of sensation. ↗

— Samuel Alexander

#beside #class #contemplation #ideas #locke