Contemplating Quotes - Page 19

• You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.

  Robert Fulghum

  Ants, Chicago, Feels

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• Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Views, People

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.185, Psychology Press

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• On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

  Al Stewart

  Running, Country, Travel

  Song: The Year Of The Cat

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• In the East, they contemplate the forest; in the West, they count the trees.

  Wayne Dyer

  Perspective, Tree, East

  Dyer, Wayne (2005). “Everyday Wisdom”, p.82, Hay House, Inc

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• Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Country, Art

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, New Directions Publishing

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• Peter Hyland's poems are both elegantly wrought and meditatively wild. They testify to an original, restless intelligence. He can cast his imagination into a woman's dress, the mind of a grasshopper, or into the glass eyeballs of a buffalo head mounted on the wall of a home in suburban Texas to contemplate 'man's tireless ingenuity.'

  Tony Hoagland

  Wall, Home, Men

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• The name 'cherubim' means 'fullness of knowledge' or 'outpouring of wisdom'... The name cherubim signifies the power to know and to see God, to receive the greatest gifts of His light, to contemplate the divine splendor in primordial power, to be filled with the gifts that bring wisdom and to share these generously with subordinates as a part of the beneficent outpouring of His wisdom.

  Pope Dionysius

  Christian, Mean, Light

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• In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer. The greatest communism is in death. Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. Become aware of it, contemplate it.

  Rajneesh

  Death, Differences, May

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• The next time you are contemplating a decision in which you are debating whether or not to go for the gusto, ask yourself this important question: "How long am I going to be dead?" With that perspective, you can now make a free, fearless choice to do just about any goddamned sneaky thing your devious little mind can think up. Go ahead. Have your fun. You're welcome. Go on. See you in hell.

  Matt Groening

  Fun, Simple, Thinking

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• To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Spiritual, Nature, Serenity

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.20, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to an inferior order of things. Counter-claims are made that they are the only living and dynamic studies... Both contentions are wrong. Language, Literature and Philosophy express, reflect and contemplate the world. But it is a world in which men will never be content to stay at rest, and so these disciplines cannot be cut off from the great searching into the nature of things without being deprived of life-blood.

  Cyril Norman Hinshelwood

  Philosophy, Cutting, Science

  Presidential Address to Classical Association, 1959.

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• The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.

  John Burroughs

  God, Religion, Monsters

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• Happy the man whose lot it is to know The secrets of the earth. He hastens not To work his fellows hurt by unjust deeds, But with rapt admiration contemplates Immortal Nature's ageless harmony, And how and when the order came to be.

  Euripides

  Hurt, Men, Order

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• This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness...they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Soul, Shadow

  "Either/Or" by Soren Kierkegaard, ‎Howard Vincent Hong, ‎Edna Hatlestad Hong, Princeton University Press, Vol. 1, (p. 168), 2013.

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• To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe

  Norman Cousins

  Beautiful, Space, Brain

  Norman Cousins (1991). “The Celebration of Life: A Dialogue on Hope, Spirit, and the Immortality of the Soul”, Bantam

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• Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate.

  Terry Pratchett

  Clever, Stupid, Men

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Feet Of Clay: (Discworld Novel 19)”, p.64, Random House

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• Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

  John Marshall

  Government, Law, Void

  Marbury v. Madison (1803)

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• The Wright brothers didn't contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn't contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn't contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don't have.

  Wayne Dyer

  Brother, Communication, Reality

  Wayne W. Dyer (2009). “The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way: Easyread Large Edition”, p.51, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In contemplating the pecuniary resources needed for the removal of such a number to so great a distance [freed slaves to Africa], my thoughts and hopes have long been turned to the rich fund presented in the western lands of the nation . . .

  James Madison

  Distance, Land, Numbers

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• One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.

  George Wald

  Believe, Tasks, Generations

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• Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Class, Evil

  Abraham Lincoln (2017). “The Complete Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln”, p.905, Open Road Media

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• [When nature appears complicated:] The moment we contemplate it as it is, and attain a position from which we can take a commanding view, though but of a small part of its plan, we never fail to recognize that sublime simplicity on which the mind rests satisfied that it has attained the truth.

  John Herschel

  Nature, Truth, Science

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• Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Truth, Science, Errors

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.157, Cambridge University Press

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• If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of the delight of contemplating it, but from an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Knowledge, Science, Knowing

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.19, Harvard University Press

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• The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Progress, Citizens, Banking

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.605

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