(138 quotes found)
“When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?”
Cyril Connolly
“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”
Dodie Smith
“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”
Lewis Mumford
“MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earh and Canada.When the world was young and Man was new, And everything was pleasant, Distinctions Nature never drew'Mongst kings and priest and peasant. We're not that way at present, Save here in this Republic, where We have that old regime, For all are kings, however bare Their backs, howe'er extreme Their hunger. And, indeed, each has a voice To accept the tyrant of his party's choice.A citizen who would not vote, And, therefore, was detested, Was one day with a tarry coat(With feathers backed and breasted) By patriots invested."It is your duty," cried the crowd,"Your ballot true to cast For the man o' your choice." He humbly bowed, And explained his wicked past:"That's what I very gladly would have done, Dear patriots, but he has never run." --Apperton Duke”
Ambrose Bierce
“When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.”
Margaret Mead
“Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet”
St. Thomas Aquinas
“Nothing is more pleasurable than to sit in the shade, sip gin and contemplate other people's adulteries, and while the wormy apple of marriage still lives, the novel will not die.”
John Skow
“Those who have not contemplated the Name of the Lord, Har, Har, are unworthy; they come and go in reincarnation.”
Sri Guru Granth Sahib
“O Nanak, through the Guru's Teachings, you shall be saved, contemplating the True Name.”
