Contemplation Quotes

533 Contemplation quotes by 355 unique authors

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do.… — Victor Hugo
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind. — Thomas Jefferson
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder… — Fran Lebowitz
I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease the tension and think about… — Sarah McLachlan
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;… — Lewis Mumford
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living… — Ross Perot
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the… — Edgar Allan Poe
The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice. — Quintilian
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is… — Auguste Rodin
Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation. — Salman Rushdie
Many museums are drawing audiences with art that is ostensibly more entertaining than stuff that just sits and invites contemplation. Interactivity, gizmos, eating, hanging out,… — Jerry Saltz
I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a… — Jane Smiley
Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. — Dodie Smith
The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done... you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do. — Lil Wayne
The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object… — Simone Weil
Historically, China is not a nation of sportsmen. We traditionally put more emphasis on being close to nature than pushing endlessly to excel. A philosophy… — Ai Weiwei
Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague,… — Joris-Karl Huysmans
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning!… — Kate Chopin
I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future. — Rainer Maria Rilke
For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood… — F. Scott Fitzgerald
There is no art without contemplation. — Robert Henri
It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness: cut out the… — John Steinbeck
True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue. — Martin Luther
Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live. — William Butler Yeats
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something. — Federico Fellini

Who Wrote These Contemplation Quotes

355 authors contributed a total of 533 Contemplation Quotes, led by these top contributors: