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31d92a1
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The greatest enemy of good thinking is busyness.
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contemplation
thinking
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John C. Maxwell |
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96fcc6e
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"Gillette--The best a man can get." I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help. My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred. I was a very long way from being the best a man can get."
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love
contemplation
rehab
realization
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Craig Ferguson |
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f1a1073
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It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic. ... How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.
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war
contemplation
laziness
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John Steinbeck |
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00e3e2e
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The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. And is he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable.
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poverty
suffering
nature
humanity
god
reverie
contemplation
poor
soul
creation
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Victor Hugo |
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f1c42c3
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Men believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe learned most of his practical knowledge - how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip - from the latter type of man. For them, trying to do anything by talking is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. Sometimes you can see the desperation spread over such a man's face as he listens to himself speak.
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speaking
contemplation
quiet
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Neal Stephenson |
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399c8fe
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I went to work, but the mood of the book would not die; it lingered, coloring everything I saw, heard, did. I now felt that I knew what the white man were feeling. Merely because I had read a book that had spoken of how they lived and thought, I identified myself with that book.
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literature
contemplation
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Richard Wright |
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7733cdd
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I found myself speaking more slowly (in an attempt to obey the Bible in speech), as if I was speaking French instead of English.
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contemplation
discipleship
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A.J. Jacobs |
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7fa5985
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C'etait un jour de fete. Mais l'haine se repete. Laissez pas la peur dominer le coeur, Si on veut que l'amour soit vainqueur
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amour-indépendance-liberté
ataque
bastille-pompeii
chute
coeur
despoir
fete
gloire
guerres
haine
horreur
lamour
notre-cœur
nouvelles
peuple
rime
terrorisme
vanite
ville
independance
peur
assassin
coexistence
amour
poesie
bastille
terrorists
vain
contemplation
joie-de-vivre
journalism
mort
revolution
conscience
crime
vengeance
trouble
terrible
france
terror
victor-hugo
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Ana Claudia Antunes |
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3427e0c
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Then there are the fully intentional pleasures, which, although in some way tied up with sensory or perceptual experience, are modes of exploration of the world. Aesthetic pleasures are like this. Aesthetic pleasures are contemplative - they involve studying an object OUTSIDE of the self, to which one is GIVING something (namely, attention and all that flows from it), and not TAKING, as in the pleasure that comes from drugs and drinks. Hence such pleasures are not addictive - there is no pathway to reward that can be short-circuited here, and a serotonin injection is not a cheap way of obtaining the experience of PARISFAL or THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
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beauty
contemplation
study
pleasure
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Roger Scruton |