Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

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.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

A daydream is an evasion.

'No words - action' was the lesson my mother taught me: as artists, we have the privilege of holding a mirror to the world, to engage, to question, to bring beauty to a complex universe.

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.

The key to creating the mental space before responding is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of being present: paying attention to and accepting what is happening in our lives. It helps us to be aware of and step away from our automatic and habitual reactions to our everyday experiences.

That's what I'm interested in: the space in between, the moment of imagining what is possible and yet not knowing what that is.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly - spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This is a sign, I've come to think, of a kind of emotional disturbance - a reaction to inner fragility. I wish I were more able to just act and do, rather than constantly have to retreat and examine and think.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst.

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

I begin each day with prayer and meditation. Throughout the day, I use affirmations and positive intentions to move through blocks, and each evening, I close the day with self-reflection and an inventory of my growth throughout the day.

It is good for society to have this introspection.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light.

Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm going through, whether it's a relationship issue or negative thoughts, I can look back and see how far I've come. It makes me proud to see my progress and how I got through a bad situation.

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.

One thought fills immensity.

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man.

Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.

Spend time reflecting on your emotional and physical existence and how that applies to the voice. You have to apply that wisdom and experience when you sing - it's what comes through.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Places are part of nature, of the bigger picture. We are interrelated. When we contemplate them in their own right, they can sometimes change our lives; they can become spiritual experiences.

Change comes from reflection.

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.

Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

Humility is attentive patience.

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That's where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you've gone through, and where you hope to go.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

We want people to experience art and think about it. The art reflects our time, it is about our culture.

To be reverent is not just to be quiet. It involves an awareness of what is taking place. It involves a divine desire to learn and to be receptive to the promptings of the Spirit. It involves a striving to seek added light and knowledge.

I would urge everyone to start looking at the world in a different way. Spend some time looking at everyday objects, at their design, their shape, their individual characteristics. Think ahead and imagine their significance.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.

As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Nothing speaks louder than an evocative photograph that stirs the imagination, tugs at the heart strings and engages the mind.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music - these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.