This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"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 beautiful." - Edgar Allan Poe
"Certainly the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but he fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak." - Francis Bacon
"In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." - Francis Bacon
"Precisely because the form is as essential to the essence as the essence to itself, absolute reality must not be conceived and expressed as essence alone, i.e. as immediate substance or pure self-contemplation of the divine, but as form also, and in the whole wealth of the developed form. Only then is it grasped and expressed as really actual. The Truth is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be." - George Santayana
"Philosophy is a steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth." - George Santayana
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor... To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks, love, and the contemplation of the Deity." - Isaac Watts
"We have to understand the world can only be grasped by an action, not by contemplation. . . . The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. . . . The hand is the cutting edge of the mind." - Jacob Bronowski
"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation ... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind." - Jacob Bronowski
"The soul of man (whose life or motion is perpetual contemplation or thought) is the mistress of two potent rivals, the one reason, the other passion, that are in the continual suit." - James Harrington or Harington
"In contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascent to God." - John Milton
"It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to." - John Stuart Mill
"A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility - these only, denominate men great and glorious." - Joseph Addison
"The contemplation of the divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their own nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it." - Joseph Addison
"The elementary idea, likewise, of the Promised Land cannot originally have referred to a part of this earth to be conquered by military right, but to a place of spiritual peace in the heart, to be discovered through contemplation." - Joseph Campbell
"The search for truth should be the goal of our activities; it is the sole end worthy of them. Doubtless we should first bend our efforts to assuage human suffering, but why? Not to suffer is a negative ideal more surely attained by the annihilation of the world. If we wish more and more to free man from material cares, it is that he may be able to employ the liberty obtained in the study and contemplation of truth." - Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom." - Lewis Mumford
"The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"What a man takes in by contemplation that he pours out in love." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"The life of work is necessary and the life of contemplation is good. In service the man gathers the harvest that has been sown in contemplation." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"The word “prayer” is applied to at least four distinct procedures - petition, intercession, adoration, contemplation. Petition is the asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion directed towards God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
"Ideals are ideas or beliefs when these are objects not only of contemplation or affirmation but also of hope, desire, endeavor, admiration and resolve." - Ralph Barton Perry
"Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable of in this life." - René Descartes
"Those who wish to hold the fortress of contemplation must first of all train in the camp of action." - Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
"The man of contemplation walks alone. He lives desireless amidst the objects of desire. The Atman is his eternal satisfaction. He sees the Atman present in all things." - Adi Shankara, aka Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya
"Jung equates the unconscious with the soul, and so when we try to live fully consciously in an intellectually predictable world, protected form all mysteries and comfortable with conformity, we lose our everyday opportunities for the soulful life. The intellect wants to know; the soul likes to be surprised. Intellect, looking outward, wants enlightenment and the pleasure of a burning enthusiasm. The soul, always drawn inward, seeks contemplation and the more shadowy, mysterious experience of the underworld." - Thomas Moore
"Soul is not about function, it is about beauty and form and memory.... For the soul, then, beauty is not defined as pleasantness of form but rather as the quality of things that invites absorption and contemplation." - Thomas Moore
"Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still survive." - William Butler Yeats
"One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist. " - Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
"Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth" - Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
"Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory:where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life." - Evelyn Underhill
"Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule." - Francis Bacon
"The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is Possible. " - Garbriel Honoré Marcel
"As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result." - Herbert Spencer
"Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination, proclaims the voice of thy inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety - no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth. " - Immanual Hermann Fichte
"Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination,--proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,--no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth." - J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte
"Cogitation & contemplation -- not indoctrination -- begets emancipation & elucidation." - Jason A. Merchey
"The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brillings, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion?" - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"Know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,or drown in despair when his days darken." - Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
"It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it." - Lionel Trilling
"From the discovery of that necessity which inevitably reduces man to nothing, we have shifted to the scornful contemplation of that nothing which is existence itself. Fear in the face of the absolute limit of death turns inward in a continuous irony; man disarms it in advance, making it an object of derision by giving it an everyday, tamed form, by constantly renewing it in the spectacle of life, by scattering it throughout the vices, the difficulties, and the absurdities of all men. Death's annihilation is no longer anything because it was already everything, because life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells. The head that will become a skull is already empty." - Michel Foucault
"Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. Their acquisition obligates each man in some way to change his life, even if it is only his inner life. They demand to be stood for. They dictate where a man must concentrate his vision. They determine his moral and intellectual priorities. They provide him with allies and make him enemies. In short, ideas impose an interest in their ultimate fate which goes far beyond the realm of the merely reasonable." - Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter
"Of Spiritual Martyrdoms whereby God Purges Souls; of Contemplation Infused and Passive; of Perfect Resignation, Inward Humility, Divine Wisdom, True Annihilation, and Internal Peace" - Miguel de Molinos
"I can write no more today. The contemplation of my sorry state has reduced me to so deep a melancholy that I contemplate opening my wrist like Petronius Arbiter and lapsing quietly into oblivion. Unlike Petronius, however, I shall have neither the sound of music nor the gentle talk of friends. I still have time to choose a better moment — besides, who knows to what nightmares I might awake." - Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West
"From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care, it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole." - Nikola Tesla
"We are whirling through endless space, with and inconceivable speed, all around everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere there is energy. There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly. Then, with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides. The mere contemplation of these magnificent possibilities expand our minds, strengthens our hopes and and fills our hearts with supreme delight." - Nikola Tesla