#contemplative

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. The end result is what matters. What one felt was what one experienced. One retires to bed as wearily from having dreamed as from having done hard physical labor. One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#life #spiritual #thinking #dreams

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

— Anne Heche

#before #contemplative #everything #i #just

He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like. ↗

— Derek Jacobi

#always #been #checking #city #contemplative

He rose and turned toward the lights of town. The tidepools bright as smelterpots among the dark rocks where the phosphorescent seacrabs clambered back. Passing through the salt grass he looked back. The horse had not moved. A ship's light winked in the swells. The colt stood against the horse with its head down and the horse was watching, out there past men's knowing, where the stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#ocean #sea #the-sea #men

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origins in the ecstasies which might have been. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe's "Berenice"

#contemplative #edgar-allan-poe #inspirational #interesting #philosophical

Contemplative prayer is natural, unprogrammed; it is perpetual openness to God, so that in the openness his concerns can flow in and out of our minds as he wills. ↗

— Ray Simpson

#christianity #contemplation #contemplative-prayer #god #nature

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

— Barbara Kolb

#composing #contemplative #doing #emotional #feminine

Quoting from Thomas Merton Dialogues With Silence The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God. (17) ↗

— Stephen Cope

#darkness #god #light #silence #transformation

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

#contemplative #less #life #live #miserable

It's these little things, they can pull you under Live your life filled with joy and wonder I always knew this altogether thunder Was lost in our little lives ↗

— R.E.M Sweetness Follows

#inspirational #song-lyrics #wonder #inspirational