Contemplative Living Quotes

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

When you become responsive to the solicitations of silence, you may be called to explore the invitation. This exploration is a kind of laboratory. You may sit and observe the coming and going of perceptions. You remain present to them but do not follow them. Following a thought is what maintains it. If you remain present without becoming an accomplice, agitation slows down through lack of fuel. In the absence of agitation you are taken by the resonance of stillness. ~ Jean Klein

I had some fears as a kid, but I was also relatively fearless. Maybe that's a result of living half the time in reality and the other half in fantasy. ~ Suzanne Vega

Her body felt like it'd been beaten with a hose. This must be what it felt like to get old. It wasn't that your body fell apart from living so long. It was that you had to take so many stompings from life that you'd be happy when the time came to close your eyes and never open them again. ~ Janet Fitch

What I did not realize was that I also hoped to have an epiphany, to discover a cause to devote my life to, a location where I thrived, a man to love, a life that would give me more fulfillment than the meager amount I had been living on for years. ~ Kristine K. Stevens

Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A journey begins with a single step ~ Ricky Maye

You know, I've never known much about fashion, living in the country and all," she said innocently. "What sort of hat would a lady like myself wear to an afternoon tea outside, in the garden, with other ladies? Assuming I'm ever invited, of course."
"Oh, that's easy... a lovely straw number, with a wide brim, en grecque curls if you're dining amongst the ruins, or piles of flowers and feathers, and tipped, just so..."
Belle allowed herself a little smile.
"No one has worn hats like that, even in this remote part of the world, for at lest ten years. Not even Madame Bussard has pulled one out of her own wardrobe recently. And she is very thrifty with her accessories. So whatever happened here must have happened at least a decade ago. ~ Liz Braswell

Clothes used to perplex me. I could never understand how to piece together an outfit the way Warner did. I thought it was a science I'd never crack; a skill beyond my grasp. But I'm realizing now that my problem was that I never knew who I was; I didn't understand how to dress the imposter living in my skin. What did I like? How did I want to be perceived? For years my goal was to minimize myself-- to fold and refold myself into a polygon of nothingness, to be too insignificant to be remembered. I wanted to appear innocent; I wanted to be thought of as quiet and harmless; I was worried always about how my very existence was terrifying to others and I did everything in my power to diminish myself, my light, my soul. I wanted so desperately to placate the ignorant. I wanted so badly to appease the assholes who judged me without knowing me that I lost myself in the process. But now? Now, I laugh. Out loud. Now, I don't give a shit. ~ Tahereh Mafi

What if I invited several people to form a study group with the purpose of living out the teachings of James together - a study that wasn't focused on learning facts, but on transforming our lives? ~ April Love-Fordham

Also, having grown up in England, you walk around London, you're passing relics that are a thousand years old - the wall of London is a thousand years old. You don't talk about it, it's part of your everyday life. The idea that people are in these environments and talking about the past and what happened, it's irrelevant. It's all about living and in this world it was about surviving. ~ Miles Millar

Things that don't get better, get worse. ~ Ellen Stern

Time doesn't stop. Your life doesn't stop and wait until you get ready to start living it. ~ Wendell Berry

It hasn't been easy, you know. Having the dead for company. Knowing that I'll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respects me, and they only do that out of fear. ~ Rick Riordan

The biggest lesson I've learned by living abroad for the last four years is the importance of communication. ~ Hidetoshi Nakata

Daily living by faith on Christ is what makes the difference between the sickly and the healthy Christian, between the defeated and the victorious saint. ~ Arthur W. Pink

This is life.
Learning to love through loss. Seeking warm pockets in the bitter cold. Finding the worth of a smile on a cloudy day. Carrying the weight of the world on weary shoulders - mistakes, sins, injustices - added upon daily. Enduring burdens that spur greater strength.
This is life.
Sorting through layers of expressions staring you straight in the eye. A battle to be right when wrong, to be good when bad, to be content when in need, and to laugh when tearing up.
This is life.
Valuing things of no worth. Reevaluating dreams. Laboring ceaselessly against the current. Seeing less, wanting more, having enough.
This is life.
Chasing the moon when the sun would extend its warmth. Slapping the hand that would offer a gentle caress. Cowering at personal, monstrous shadows. Giving and taking in unbalanced weights. Diminishing the majesty of mountains in order to form our own lowly hills. Hoping for more than we deserve.
This is life.
Hurting. Despairing. Losing. Weeping. Suffering. Laboring. Sinking. Mourning. Appreciating with greater capacity and sincerity a learned knowledge that these adversities do have their opposites.
This is life.
A taste. A revelation. A banishment. A mercy. A test. An experience. A turbulent sea-voyage that shall assuredly reach the unseen shore, making seasoned sailors of us all.
This is life. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways. ~ Diane Ackerman

I'm interested in living more of a life that's invisible to everybody and more vibrant to a fewer people that are in my life. ~ John Mayer

Why do you think the fans like us - why they prefer our street raps over all that phony stuff out there? Because we're telling the real story of what it's like living in places like Compton. We're giving them reality. We're like reporters. We give them the truth. ~ Eazy-E

The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're decoding ~ Maureen Corrigan

I had to overcome challenge after challenge in order to take my life from nothing to living my dreams. ~ Curtis Jackson

Prudence's flat was in the kind of block where Jane imagined people might be found dead, though she had never said this to Prudence herself; it seemed rather a macabre fancy and not one to be confided to an unmarried woman living alone. ~ Barbara Pym

The fact is that I write under duress, often in my bed, often at the last minute. I'm kind of a binge writer I would say, which I don't support. I was always kind of that way. Probably the time I was the most regular as a writer was college. It was like, what else is there to do when you're living in the Midwest studying creative writing? ~ Lena Dunham

You wrestle one night, get up the next morning and fly out to the next city. You try to work out, you try to get some food into you and, lo and behold, you have to go work again. You are living out of a suitcase. ~ Bill Goldberg

This realization that Someone is living in us and through us is exactly how we plug into a much larger mind and heart beyond our own. ~ Richard Rohr

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred. ~ Alice Sebold

I think we are all interested in end-times ideas and also in the current climate that we are all living in, where money is a little harder to come by, things continue to get expensive; gas prices are not too far from people's heads. There are more and more people. Human society's going to have real problems. ~ Dominic Monaghan

Our legacy is not found in all the 'stuff' we've accumulated on our life's journey. It's written in the memories of those whose lives we've touched along the way. ~ Justin Young

It's such a lonely existence, living with a rock n' roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more. ~ Anita Pallenberg

Enter upon thy paths, O year!
Thy paths, which all who breathe must tread,
Which lead the Living to the Dead,
I enter; for it is my doom
To tread thy labyrinthine gloom;
To note who round me watch and wait;
To love a few; perhaps to hate;
And do all duties of my fate. ~ Bryan Procter

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure. ~ Tom Robbins

But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties. ~ Robert Benchley

Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. ~ Anonymous