Contemplating Quotes

In light of the unbroken record of invoking God's name in foundational documents throughout the world, throughout the colonies, and throughout history, the stubborn refusal of the US Constitution to invoke the Almighty is abnormal, historic, radical, and not accidental. But liberals miss a basic point, too: The framers of the Constitution were not contemplating the role of "government" in religion. They were debating the role of the national government in religion. ~ Steven Waldman

It suddenly occurred to both Driggs and Lex, in that very same instant, that neither of them wanted anything more in the world than to tear off every single piece of each other's clothes and make wild, passionate, messy adolescent love under the radiant glow of the full moon.
Their chests rose and fell. A few seconds passed.
"I'm going to sleep," Driggs panted, clambering off the roof.
"Me too," Lex huffed, right behind him.
And without another word they fled to their rooms, slammed the doors, and threw themselves into bed, where they both spent the next five hours dazedly contemplating their respective ceilings. ~ Gina Damico

To me, work is not a burden but my main hobby. This is why I always take work with me when I go on holidays. Moreover, that's when new projects occur to me: while contemplating beautiful landscapes or seascapes. ~ Mario Bunge

When contemplating a shield that would protect America for incoming missiles, Democrats suddenly became hardheaded fiscal conservatives. For the first time in recorded history, liberals were concerned about the cost and usefulness of a government program. These people believe federally funded art therapy for the homeless will pay for itself. That you can take to the bank. But a shield to repel incoming nuclear missiles from American soil they said, was too expensive and wouldn't work. ~ Ann Coulter

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster.
There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ Helen Keller

Look at these cliffs! Some are abrupt and unpredictable. Some other are soft and with smooth slopes. Yet, they all have the same purpose: either to lure you and bring you down or to teach you how to stand up, firmly, on their rims while contemplating the horizon. Here, you have the perfect vision of the abyss beneath. the majesty of the skies above, or the endlessness of the horizon in front; but you can't see what's behind, and that's how it should be! What's the point in contemplating something that you already know and lived? Haven't your coming here made you know the paths on which you walked? That's why, what belongs to the past should remain there. The past gives us the lessons. We do not need a heavier luggage than this! ~ Irina Serban

Our emotional valence – positive or negative experiences – affects not only how we narrate childhood events, but also which memories we retain. The interplay between a person encountering environment experiences meshed with self-editing of various aspects of their complex memory system results in a person becoming more than a collection of memories: a person creates their personalized version of a self. A person integrates many experiences into creating their being. Personal encounters with other people as well as moments of personal solitude contemplating ideas and personal existence congeal to form the depiction of a self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.'
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday. ~ Victor Hugo

Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I would enjoy sitting in a rocker ... listening to soft music and contemplating the things of the universe. But such activity offers no challenge and makes no contribution. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way. ~ Buzz Aldrin

After researching, reviewing, considering, and contemplating with continued attention; I have concluded that the beast is among us. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

One reason most people never stop thinking is that mental frenzy keeps us from having to see the upsetting aspects of our lives. If I'm constantly brooding about my children or career, I won't notice that I'm lonely. If I grapple continuously with logistical problems, I can avoid contemplating little issues like, say, my own mortality. ~ Martha Beck

The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

It's impossible to contemplate the life of soil very long without seeing its analogy to the life of the spirit. ~ Wendell Berry

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others ~ Sharon Salzberg

I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way that you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out, however, that billions of other human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences--but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of nature. ~ Sam Harris

Not a breath, not a sound - except at intervals the muffled crackling of stones that the cold was reducing to sand - disturbed the solitude and silence surrounding Janine. After a moment, however, it seemed to her that the sky above her was moving in a sort of slow gyration. In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually towards the horizon. Janine could not tear herself away from contemplating those drifting flares. She was turning with them, and the apparently stationary progress little by little identified her with the core of her being, where cold and desire were now vying with each other. Before her the stars were falling one by one and being snuffed out among the stones of the desert, and each time Janine opened a little more to the night. Breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the dead weight of others, the craziness or stuffiness of life, the long anguish of living and dying. After so many years of mad, aimless fleeing from fear, she had come to a stop at last. At the same time, she seemed to recover her roots and the sap again rose in her body, which had ceased trembling. Her whole belly pressed against the parapet as she strained towards the moving sky; she was merely waiting for her fluttering heart to calm down and establish silence within her. The last stars of the constellations dropped their clusters a little lower on the desert horizon and became s ~ Albert Camus

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort of thought and will which is necessary to place themselves among the more fortunate members of the community; but very few among these are seriously concerned to secure for all the advantages which they seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional men who have that kind of love toward mankind at large that makes them unable to endure patiently the general mass of evil and suffering, regardless of any relation it may have to their own lives. ~ Bertrand Russell

To contemplate is to look at shadows. ~ Victor Hugo

Chili is much improved by having had a day to contemplate its fate. ~ John Steele Gordon

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. ~ Ted Chiang

You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom. ~ Gao Xingjian

I cozied an apple in my hand and tried the weight of it against my palm, contemplating whether or not beaning a judge with half-rotten fruit would qualify as contempt of the court. Quite probably. ~ Rachel Heffington

We skim over the surface thoughtlessly. But we must acknowledge that thinking well is a time-consuming process. We can't expect instant results. We have to slow down a bit, and take the time to contemplate, meditate, and even pray. It is the only route to a more meaningful and efficient existence. ~ M. Scott Peck

They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at once the fiend was gone, as happens with the moskovett, that bitter blast, that colossus of cold air that blows on our eastern shores throughout March, and then one morning you hear the birds, and the flags hang flaccid, and the outlines of the world are again in place. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind - things that exist only there - and clear out space for yourself: ... by comprehending the scale of the world ... by contemplating infinite time ... by thinking of the speed with which things change - each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows. ~ Marcus Aurelius

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Snoopy. I love the way he sits and lies on his kennel and contemplates the great things of life. ~ Jackie Tabick

Anyone who is contemplating going to Afghanistan does need to think very carefully about the consequences, both to them and their families in terms of the grief they may suffer, as well as contemplate the legal action that might follow on their return, if they were to return, ~ Geoff Hoon

It was not easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I hope you're not contemplating retaliation against Mr. Figueroa."

She smiled again. "Don't need to. Karma will take care of him."

"As long as Karma isn't a hit man from New Delhi, we're good. ~ Marianne Stillings

Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do. ~ Fannie Hurst

The two hardest things to contemplate in life ( ... ) are failure and age, and those are one and the same. ~ Ian Caldwell

They want to keep the government 'out of our bedrooms.' What are they talking about? I have to live in their society, remember. And I built my house, which means I built my own bedroom. The government told me how far apart the studs had to be in my bedroom wall, they dictated how thick the sheetrock had to be, they mandated how far apart the sheetrock screws had to be, they had policies on the configuration of those sheetrock screws, they have laws on the size of the windows and what kind of glass I can have in them, and there are stern legal warnings on the mattress tags. What do you mean, you want to keep the government out of our bedrooms? The president is probably contemplating, right this minute, the establishment of a bedroom czar. ~ Douglas Wilson

Thus in this sad, but oh, too pleasing state! my soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, trusts on you alone. ~ William Congreve

In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. Hence there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing. ~ Socrates

Miles, when he was contemplating this technology for my future grandchildren, wanted to start twelve at once and do them all in one efficient batch. Like growing his own platoon, I gather. I offered to take turns with Ekaterin holding his head under water till he had a better idea, but as it turned out, she didn't need my help. Wonderful girl, my daughter-in-law. I still don't know what he did to deserve her. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

I caught up on a lot of just domestic normal everyday stuff, and grew up a lot, and went to therapy, and did a lot of contemplating and figuring things out. I needed to just strip everything away and figure out who I am and get to know myself, as cheesy as that sounds. ~ Natalie Maines

What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. ~ Mark Twain

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent rhythm of the tides, I channeled my chaotic thoughts through my pen and released them into poetry, until the quiet desperation passed and I was secure in the knowledge that I had made it through another day. ~ B.G. Bowers

The happy man ... will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way. ~ Aristotle.

Yes, letter writing is antiquated - though there remain a few renegades who still so treasure the luxury of contemplating their lives in letters that they would rather write than call. ~ Joan Frank

When he took my hand he taught me something about the value of touch, the communicative power of the human hand. I didn't know, as I lay there, that I would think of him many times in the years ahead. When my son lay on a hospital bed, age four, with the raging fever of meningitis, I reached through the bodies of the attending doctors and held his slack, heated hand in both of mine. When my youngest child disappeared beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and I had to leap in, haul her out, turn her upside-down so that the water drained from her lungs. Then all she and I could do was sit on the sand, wrapped in towels, contemplating what had almost happened, her small fingers wrapped in mine. ~ Maggie O'Farrell

You can achieve enlightenment by simply spending time contemplating nature: the formation of clouds, the beauty of the forest, and the lifecycle of the beings that dwell within. ~ Loren Mayshark

As soon as the words presented themselves, Gabriel knew that they were perfect for him. Perfect for what he was contemplating doing to her. Perfect for his own self-justification.
Tasting. Taking. Sucking. Sinning. Draining. Abandoning.
She was pure. She was innocent. He wanted her.
Facilis descensus Averni.
But he would not be the one to make her bleed. He could not, would not, make another girl bleed for the rest of his life. All thoughts of seduction and mad, passionate f*cking on desks and chairs, against walls and bookshelves and windows, immediately gave way. He would not take her. He would not mark her and claim what he had no right to claim. ~ Sylvain Reynard

Und was ist deine Meinung?' wiederholte der Mann. Dallow kniff die Augen leicht zusammen und sagt rasch ohne weiter zu überlegen: 'Ein Lichtspiel. Die Welt ist ein Lichtspiel.' ('And what is your opinion?' the man repeated. Dallow slightly squinted his eyes and said quickly without contemplating any further: 'A play of lights. The world is a play of lights.') ~ Christoph Hein

She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling for a long moment. A raindrop moved slowly down her neck; he watched as it turned down the slope of
her breast to disappear inside the collar of her shirt.
He was seriously contemplating becoming jealous of a droplet of water. Yorkshire was obviously damaging to his sanity. ~ Sarah MacLean

One of those was occupied by a dwarf. Clean-shaved and pink-cheeked, with a mop of chestnut hair, a heavy brow, and a squashed nose, he perched on a high stool with a wooden spoon in hand, contemplating a bowl of purplish gruel with red-rimmed eyes. Ugly little bastard, Tyrion thought. The ~ George R R Martin

There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you. ~ Stephen Fry

Dear friend…'

The Witcher swore quietly, looking at the sharp, angular, even runes drawn with energetic sweeps of the pen, faultlessly reflecting the author's mood. He felt once again the desire to try to bite his own backside in fury. When he was writing to the sorceress a month ago he had spent two nights in a row contemplating how best to begin. Finally, he had decided on "Dear friend." Now he had his just deserts.

'Dear friend, your unexpected letter – which I received not quite three years after we last saw each other – has given me much joy. My joy is all the greater as various rumours have been circulating about your sudden and violent death. It is a good thing that you have decided to disclaim them by writing to me; it is a good thing, too, that you are doing so so soon. From your letter it appears that you have lived a peaceful, wonderfully boring life, devoid of all sensation. These days such a life is a real privilege, dear friend, and I am happy that you have managed to achieve it.

I was touched by the sudden concern which you deigned to show as to my health, dear friend. I hasten with the news that, yes, I now feel well; the period of indisposition is behind me, I have dealt with the difficulties, the description of which I shall not bore you with. It worries and troubles me very much that the unexpected present you received from Fate brings you worries. Your supposition that this requires professional help is absolutely correct. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Toxic thoughts leave no room for truth to flourish. And in the absence of truth, lies reign. Spend some time soaking in your favorite verses from Scripture tonight. The more we read God's truths and let truth fill our minds, the less time we'll spend contemplating untruths and toxic thoughts. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

You were contemplating the mountain, Mr. Conway?" Came the inquiry.
"Yes, it's a fine sight. It has a name, I suppose?"
"It is called Karakal"
"I don't think I've ever heard of it. Is is very high?"
"Over twenty-eight thousand feet."
"Indeed? I didn't realize there would be anything on that scale outside the Himalayas. Has it been properly surveyed? Whose are the measurements?"
"Whose would you expect, my dear sir? Is there anything incompatible between monasticism and trigonometry? ~ James Hilton

That's a poweful ability you've got there. Seriously, I was Contemplating killing Cody so we could be a couple.'
She snorted, but she never stopped smiling. 'We'd never make it romantically. You're too demanding in bed. "Harder, Rome. Now, Rome. Tie me up, Rome."'
'Bitch,' I muttered good-naturedley. It was nice to have my friend back. 'You know you wouldn't be able to get enough of me.'
'I like where this conversation is headed,' a male voice said from the doorway.
I looked past Sherridan and spotted Rome in the doorway.
'Hey, baby,' he said.
'Cat Man.' A more welcome sight I'd never beheld. My heart even picked up speed, my monitor announcing it for all the world to hear..
He stalked to me and unceremoniously shoved me aside on the bed where he plopped down and cuddled me close. 'Mad?'
As if. 'I'm grateful. I was walking toward Sherridan with every intention of making out with her, so you did me a favor. She would have fallen in love with me, and then where would we have been?'
'Now I'm mad at /myself/ for stopping you,' he grumbled, and we all laughed. Men! ~ Gena Showalter

The act of 'letting go' is actually very easy - it's effortless. Thinking about, talking about, and contemplating 'letting go' is hard. ~ Mike Brown

According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him. ~ John Green

James teaches us that we can be victors instead of victims, if we will mentally prepare ourselves by: 1. celebrating the reason behind our trials; 2. calculating the results of our trials; 3. calling on God's resources in our trials; 4. considering our reactions to our trials; 5. contemplating the reward of our trials. ~ David Jeremiah

Then, just as d'Alembord was about to sell his commission and retire to one of his prospective father-in-law's farms, Napoleon had returned to France. Colonel Ford, worried that he was losing his veteran Captain of skirmishers, had begged d'Alembord to stay for the impending campaign and implicit in the Colonel's plea was a promise that d'Alembord would receive the next vacant majority in the battalion. That enticement was sufficient. The captaincy would sell for fifteen hundred pounds which was a good enough fortune for any young man contemplating marriage, but a majority would fetch two thousand six hundred pounds, and so d'Alembord, with some misgivings, but reassured by the prospects of a fine marriage portion, had agreed to Ford's request. ~ Bernard Cornwell

I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

A moment later he was in his garden, walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the eyes which remain open. ~ Victor Hugo

The greatest gift ... is the realization that life does not consist either of wallowing in the past or of peering anxiously at the future; and it is appalling to contemplate the great number of often painful steps by which one arrives at a truth so old, so obvious, and so frequently expressed. It is good for one to appreciate that life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now-this day-this hour. ~ Charles Macomb Flandrau

A sign of this is what happens (10) in our actions, for we delight in contemplating the most accurately made images of the very things that are painful for us to see, such as the forms of the most contemptible insects and of dead bodies. ~ Aristotle.

I particularly recommend," [Dain] went on, his eyes upon the female, "that you resist the temptation to count if you are contemplating a gift for your chère amie. Women deal in a higher mathematical realm than men, especially when it comes to gifts."


"That, Bertie, is a consequence of the feminine brain having reached a more advanced state of development," said the female without looking up. "She recognizes that the selection of a gift requires the balancing of a profoundly complicated moral, psychological, aesthetic, and sentimental equation. I should not recommend that a mere male attempt to involve himself in the delicate process of balancing it, especially by the primitive method of counting. ~ Loretta Chase

I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much. ~ Hugh Laurie

Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand." Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that the young are never grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, "Naterally wicious." Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner. ~ Charles Dickens

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothetical perfect human being.

Impersonal emotion! And what - I thought - do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or direct impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 'What could I buy that for?' Impulse of acquisition; or: 'From what quarry did it come?' Impulse of inquiry; or: 'Which would be the right end for my head?' Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition - I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse - to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word 'impersonal,' then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of one' ~ John Galsworthy

If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first. ~ Philip Larkin

Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin. ~ Leigh Brackett

What is this?" she coughed out.

"All you're gonna get…or maybe not." The last bit was said in such a deep, throaty voice, she strained to catch it. It sounded naughty, like he was contemplating tangling his fingers into her hair, pulling her head back, and covering her mouth with his own. Oh sweet pirouette. She felt a little bit breathless at the idea. The booze didn't help.

Needing something to do with her hands besides reaching across the table and testing out his "maybe not," she fiddled with the hem of her sweater. Her cheeks warmed, nevertheless.
KNOCK OUT ~ Michele Mannon

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself. ~ Carl Sagan

Simon, as always, stuck out at the club like a sore thumb, in jeans and an old T-shirt that said MADE IN BROOKLYN across the front. His freshly scrubbed hair was dark brown instead of green or pink, and his glasses perched crookedly on the end of his nose. He looked less as if he were contemplating the powers of darkness and more as if he were on his way to chess club. ~ Cassandra Clare

If you have been brave enough to love, and somtimes you won and sometimes you lost; if you have cared enough to try, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't; if you have been bold enough to dream and found yourself with some dreams that came true and a lot of broken pieces of dreams that didn't, that fell to earth and shattered,then you can look back from the mountaintop you now find yourself standing on, like Moses contemplating the tablets that would guide human behavior for a millenia, resting in the Ark alongside the broken fragments of an earlier dream. And you, like Moses, can realize how ful your life has been and how richly you are blessed. ~ Harold S. Kushner

Let us contemplate the humility of the Son of God born into poverty. Let us imitate him by sharing with those who are weak. ~ Pope Francis

No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?"
Dash said, "I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I'm even here."
Mark scoffed. "You bookish little pervert."
"Thank you, sir!" Dash said brightly. ~ David Levithan

Stop contemplating and start celebratingYeah, you gotta live before you die. ~ Mike Ness

Contemplating while barefoot on the grounds my father and grandfather walked, I saw my life clearly. With African sun nibbling on my dark skin and gentle winds soothing my foreboding, my past life and current responsibilities overwhelmed me occasionally. Abundant tears flowed freely. Dripping on my face and clothes. Travelling through the ancient roads created by my forefathers, grasslands, trees and anthills kept me company. A lonely journey. I knew that nothing remains the same, but ones past never changes. Even in the loneliness of my past, I accepted that you cannot effectively go forward without knowing how and where you started your journey. Even in that state of near dejection I was aware that my sojourn in foreign lands is not forever, but my lording of this beautiful land, my own Africa, where my spent body will finally rest someday, is for eternity. Nothing remains the same, but nothing ever changes. It depends on how you look at your life. ~ Fidelis O. Mkparu

The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time
a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken. ~ Frederick Lenz

A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. ~ Walter Benjamin

One night the month before, back on the other side of the Belgian border, Aughenbaugh had delivered a lecture on the etymology of the word war. He said that he had looked it up and it came from an ancient Indo-European root signifying confusion. That was a foxhole night, bitter cold. The 5th Panzer Army was making its last great push west. You had to hand it to those Indo-Europeans, my grandfather thought, rolling through Vellinghausen. Confusion shown on the faces of the townspeople. War confused civilians every bit as surely as it did the armies who got lost in its fogs. It confounded conquest with liberation, anger with heartache, hunger with gratitude, hatred with awe. The 53rd Combat Engineers looked pretty confused, too. They were milling around at the edge of town, contemplating the long stretch of road between and beautiful downtown Berlin, trying to figure out if they ought to mine it or clear it of mines. ~ Michael Chabon

All the bystanders at an event worthy of note adopt various gestures of admiration when contemplating the occurrence. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Contemplating the bowl, it is possible to see the interdependent elements which give rise to the bowl. ~ Nhat Hanh

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

We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forst, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence Man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men's dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die. ~ Andre Malraux

Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf the past, present and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself - and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home" - the everyday, metaphorical kind - can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way.

(s ~ Terri Windling

It was five minutes of screaming, slamming myself against the door, and stamping my feet-and a minute of contemplating the cold, horrible idea that I might have to leave the room to find anyone, and maybe this had been their plan all along, and Oh God, Oh God-before I heard Dr. Elpinoy's nervous voice. ~ Lia Habel

Was contemplating my purpose - when the notion chose to arrive - that I'll be dead much, much longer - than I will ever be alive. ~ Joseph DiFrancesco

It is better to spend one day contemplating the birth and death of all things than a hundred years never contemplating beginnings and endings. ~ Gautama Buddha

I really believe there are some people who hate to contemplate the happiness of others. ~ Jean Plaidy

When God contemplates some great work, He begins it by the hand of some poor, weak, human creature, to whom He afterwards gives aid. ~ Martin Luther

To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are. ~ Virginia Woolf

I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Because I'm not thinking about the fiber content in stain resistant carpet." My eyes remained stubbornly shut.
"What does that mean?"
"It means ... " I lifted my lids and found him surveying me with simple curiosity. I swallowed a new thickness in my throat, knowing that I needed to tell him the truth. "It means my brain finds you more interesting than all the really interesting trivial facts I could be contemplating or researching at present."
His answering smile was leisurely, measured; "I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. ~ Penny Reid

Novelty and Security: the security of novelty, the novelty of security. Always the full thing, the whole subject, the true subject, stood just behind the one you found yourself contemplating. The trick, but it wasn't a trick, was to take up at once the thing you saw and the reason you saw it as well; to always bite off more than you could chew, and then chew it. If it were self-indulgence for him to cut and polish his semiprecious memories, and yet seem like danger, like a struggle he was unfit for, then self-indulgence was a potent force, he must examine it, he must reckon with it. ~ John Crowley

Every man has been made by God in order to acquire knowledge and contemplate. ~ Pythagoras

These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard ... How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for! ~ Henry David Thoreau

Besides, before contemplating starting a new life, you need to make something of this one. ~ Maude Julien

I'm contemplating moving to London for a period of time. I've been in Los Angeles for 15 years and I'm really tired of it. I'm continually uninspired by what's being sent to me. Even by huge films that they're doing there. They're just awful. ~ Sherilyn Fenn