Absence Contemplation Quotes

Bravery is absence of contemplation and idiocy is the extinction of it. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

The little thickets were the only place to get to.
The absence of the sea

Set a white, extravagant quiet.
I awaited the great beauty of the gorse - ~ Stuart Barnes

I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative. ~ Richard Rohr

Absence makes the dick grow fonder, isn't that what they say? ~ Tara Sivec

I had seen the few things I cared about forget me seamlessly. I had seen the life I never really fit into heal up around my absence like a wound scabbed over. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Most people', I say 'couldn't tell you if they're happy. They're simply baffled by the question. They might, if pressed, describe happiness as the absence of pain or any particular anxiety. They might cite small moments of exhilaration ... but they'd admit that even these moments are shadowed by a cloud of apprehension'. ~ William Donaldson

How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people mattered ~ Kristin Cashore

My mind couldn't fit itself around the shape of his absence. ~ Lia Mills

Sometimes you can't tell how consuming love is until you can see its absence ~ Jodi Picoult

When other lovers, in arms across,
Rejoice their chief delight,
Drowned in tears, to mourn my loss,
I stand the bitter night
In my window, where I may see
Before the winds how the clouds flee:
Lo, what a mariner love that made of me!

-from XVII [A Lady Complains of Her Lover's Absence] found in "Poems of Love and Chivalry ~ Henry Howard

Peace is not only the absence of violence, but the presence of love, kindness, compassion and harmony. ~ Debasish Mridha

(the pharmakon is neither remedy now poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, neither the inside nor the outside, etc.; the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign nor a thing, neither a presence nor an absence, neither a position nor a negation, etc.; spacing is neither space nor time; the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondarity. Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or; the mark is also the marginal limit, the march, etc.) ~ Jacques Derrida

By forty, is there anyone who hasn't had to recognize that happiness, as understood by youth, is illusory? That the best one can hope for is an absence of too many tragedies and that the road through the inevitable grief be, if not smooth, then steady? ~ Robin Black

Sister Carlotta, I'm on a leave of absence right now. That means I've been sacked, in case you don't understand how the I.F. handles these things."
"Sacked! A miscarriage of justice. You ought to be shot. ~ Orson Scott Card

The first day of spring, the vernal equinox - the season of renewal when the earth sheds its winter cloak, flowers bloom, and the heart feels as though everything is once again imaginable. The smell of fresh-cut grass, shagging fly balls, and scraping mud from baseball cleats. A brief contemplation and tear for those gone from the field, their easy laugh and nimble sprint no longer gracing the game. ~ Galen Watson

Because the minister's wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy. ~ Augusten Burroughs

But there was so much that one had to pretend not to see the incredible clutter that threatened to overtake the entire flat save for those few narrow paths that the old man moved on; the acrid odor of dirt and neglect that pervaded the place and worked its way into your pores so that you carried it with you after you had left; his odd ways,born of living so long in an absence of mirrors. ~ Michael Bedard

The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may mean everything ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

There are reasons for everything, even if we don't know them," Stevie said. "Motive."
"Okay," Nate said. "My motive is that I prefer dragons."
"To what?"
"To the absence of dragons. ~ Maureen Johnson

ACCIDENT A condition of affairs in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body better. ~ Gideon Wurdz

Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is possible only if I have achieved independence; if I can stand and walk without needing crutches, without ~ Erich Fromm

For Hitschmann and Bergler, 'frigidity' had a single criterion: 'absence of the vaginal orgasm.' The standard was unqualified and absolute. A woman who did not enjoy intercourse: frigid. Women who derived sexual pleasure from acts other than intecourse were frigid too. Nothing else mattered, only whether a woman had an orgasm because a man's penis was inside her vagina. Sexually agressive women were labeled 'frigid' because of the association between masculinity and aggressiveness. Womanhood that was not passive was not properly womanly. "Frigidity," as Jane Gerhardt points out, "thus became a label and a diagnosis that defined how much sexual desire a woman must have and in what kinds of sexual behavior she must engage to be 'healthy'. ~ Hanne Blank

God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and contemplation. ~ Charles Brent

Health is thus a condition of well-being and an ability to appreciate life. It's not necessarily optimizing or conforming to a set of measurable quantities like life expectancy or blood pressure, nor is it removing all symptoms using drugs. Health is the presence of something positive, rather than the absence of something negative. ~ Jacob Lund Fisker

No greater love exists than when you sacrifice your very life for those who are your brothers and sisters by grace and by blood. God is the essence of your soul, as your soul is the essence of your body; therefore, just as the soul is more valuable than the body, so the union of the soul to God by the heavenly food of love is far more valuable than the union of the body to the soul by any earthly food in this life. Feeding your body healthy food is a good thing to do, but if you don't nourish your soul also, it will be forever hungry. Do both, then, but remember that feeding your soul is most important. Merely feeding your body with good food doesn't help you achieve salvation, but when your soul is well-fed, even when food for the body is scarce, your soul not only wins salvation but also knows the peace of God as it advances along the path of contemplation. ~ Anonymous

Real peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the presence of justice. ~ Andrew W. Marlowe

At the inception of this writing project, I considered the wisdom of executing a purposeful slaughtering of my egotistical self. If I do screw up the temerity to commence with an autopsy of a soulful self, I might lack the fortitude to stay the course to dissect the nature of my being. Without deep-seated faith, I risk faltering at the operating table and never rising again. Will I suffer from a desertion of boldness? Alternatively, will a stunning lack of talent and criminal absence of cognitive insight, perception, and discernment along with a paucity of intellectual and practical acumen betray me when I attempt to whisk up incomplete mental fragments previously abandoned to simmer in the deepest recesses of my animalistic being? Overwrought by a hovering sense of terror concerning what filthy rubbish I might discover lurking within the hallways of my afflicted soul, I am hesitant to descend into the labyrinth of the unknown. I might not endure to write about what fate awaits me when I attempt to harpoon protean personal thoughts steeped in fear and disgust. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Poor is the manifestation of the absence of communication. ~ Meir Ezra

And so I'll wish you safe wonderings, an utter absence of distasteful suitors, and many more days of sunshine for your hatless head. ~ Kiersten White

Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation. ~ Robert McNamara