Quotes about Contemplation

The old man lay dim and bleared in his brass bed. Suttree leaned back in the chair and pushed at his eyes with the back of his hand. The day had grown dusk, the rain eased. Pigeons flapped up overhead and preened and crooned. The keeper of this brief vigil said that he'd guessed something of the workings in the wings, the ropes and sand-bags and the houselight toggles. Heard dimly a shuffling and coughing beyond the painted drop of the world.

The army leaves me time to think, and saves me from the battle of life.

In the end, the soul is alone brooding on the face of the uncreated flux, as a bird on a dark sea...

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me.

The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of Humanity and Nature—the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.

Here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age—and my book—casting backward glances over our travel'd road.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, / And accrue what I hear into myself....and let sounds contribute / toward me.

Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.

Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.

Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world's beauty and abundance.

He wasn't much of a listener, not a great payer of attention to things outside his head.

Do you do that with all your friends?" "What's that?" "Prepare them for the worst." She nodded. "If the worst is a possibility, then you keep it on the table. Don't hide from it. Don't run. It can happen. And if and when it does, you need to have thought about it ahead of time. That way you're not crushed when your worst thought becomes reality.