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Home  »  Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay  »  Contemplation

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Contemplation

There is a sweet pleasure in contemplation. All others grow flat and insipid on frequent use; and when a man hath run through a set of vanities in the declension of his age, he knows not what to do with himself, if he cannot think.

Sir Thomas P. Blount.

Contemplative men may be without the pleasure of discovering the secrets of state, and men of action are commonly without the pleasure of tracing the secrets of divine art.

Nehemiah Grew: Cosmologia.

Contemplation is keeping the idea which is brought into the mind, for some time actually in view.

So many kinds of creatures might be to exercise the contemplative faculty of man.

John Ray: On the Creation.

There are two functions, contemplation and practice, according to the general division of objects; some of which entertain our speculation, others employ our actions.

Robert South.

There is not much difficulty in confining the mind to contemplate what we have a great desire to know.

Dr. Isaac Watts.

Conceive of things clearly and distinctly, in their own nature; conceive of things completely, in all their parts; conceive of things comprehensively, in all their properties and relations; conceive of things extensively, in all their kinds; conceive of things orderly, or in a proper method.

Dr. Isaac Watts.