- Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read. ~ Albert Pike
- Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them. ~ Gabriel Marcel
- Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. ~ Nicolas de Chamfort
- Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. ~ Dodie Smith
- Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation. ~ Aldous Huxley
- Few people even scratch the surface; much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience. ~ Randolph Bourne
- Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. ~ Midge Decter
- If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. ~ John Dos Passos
- If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words. ~ Fran Lebowitz
- Most true happiness comes from one’s inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline. ~ William L. Shirer
- No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due to his neighbor. ~ St. Augustine
- Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation. ~ John Jay Chapman
- Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action. ~ George Gillespie
- 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. ~ Emile Durkheim
- Take time to think, it is the source of power. ~ Author Unknown
- 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
- The fly that touches honey cannot use it’s wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it’s freedom and hinders contemplation. ~ Ghose Aurobindo
- The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation. ~ Simone Weil
- The way we treat another human being is the way we treat our Lord. That doesn’t need further explanation as much as it needs contemplation. ~ John P. Hahn
- The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. ~ Jacob Bronowski
- 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
- What a man takes in by contemplation that he pours out in love. ~ Meister Eckhart
- With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. ~ William Wordsworth
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