Contemplative Quotes

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.

For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.

In the active life all the vices are first of all to be removed by the practice of good works, so that in the contemplative life a man may, with now purified mental gaze, pass on to the contemplation of the Divine Light.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

Could the purr be anything but contemplative?

Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject.

The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

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.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

If you were going to be attracted to a mystical faith which involved the contemplative life, Buddhism would be quite reasonable. But then, not everybody is a budding mystic. In fact, it's pretty certain that very few people are. So another kind of religion, one that was perhaps more pragmatic and service-oriented, might appeal to those others. So I think you have to take your values into account.

A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.

Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end - and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life, I can only speculate why so little has been said of this breakthrough; in fact , I may never get over the silence on the part of writers who say nothing about this second movement.

Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls - women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

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

The onset of this second movement is characterized by the falling away of self and coming upon "that" which remains when it is gone. But this going-out is an upheaval, a complete turnabout of such proportions it cannot possibly be missed, under-emphasized, or sufficiently stressed as a major landmark in the contemplative life.

In my personal life, I am very contemplative.

Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of itself: the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative but active.

You know, Monsieur, that, although the contemplative life is more perfect than the active life, it is not, however, more so than one which embraces at the same time contemplation and action, as does yours, by God's grace.

In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.

In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves.