"Meditation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time have been forever destroyed. The large bay placed over the small front door gives a mysterious light in the nave of the church, and sends the rays directly upon the main altar or dagoba, leaving the lateral columns and porticoes in a semi-obscurity well calculated to inspire meditation and prayer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... public and ostensible kind; while he neglects duties of a higher, though more private nature,—and overlooks entirely, it may be, his own moral condition. The ascetic, on the contrary, shuts himself up in his cell, and imagines that he pleases God by meditation and voluntary austerities. But this is not the part of him who truly feels his varied relations, and correctly estimates his true responsibilities.—It is striking, also, to remark, how the highest principles lead to a character of harmony and consistency, which all inferior ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... this to be true with respect to arts, still it is not to follow that the same rule holds good with respect to virtue; because virtue requires a great deal of meditation and practice, and this is not always the case with arts; and also because virtue embraces the stability, firmness, and consistency of the entire life; and we do not see that the same is the case ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe, apart, silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman was no other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent periodical entitled "The Asiaeum," which was written to prove that whatever is popular is necessarily bad,—a valuable and recondite truth, which "The Asinaeum" had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... September, 1862, he composed for his own reading alone a sad and inconclusive fragment of meditation which was found after his death. "The will of God prevails," he wrote. "In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... silence brooded over the flat. By the dim light of the police-lamp Private Phillips paced noiselessly up and down on his beat, and the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James passed softly from cabin to cabin in that gentle meditation mothers play ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Assumes for his, as being plainly so. A pope must hold by popes a little,—yes, By councils, from Nicaea up to Trent,— By hierocratic empire, more or less Irresponsible to men,—he must resent Each man's particular conscience, and repress Inquiry, meditation, argument, As tyrants faction. Also, he must not Love truth too dangerously, but prefer "The interests of the Church" (because a blot Is better than a rent, in miniver)— Submit to see the people swallow hot Husk-porridge, which his chartered churchmen stir Quoting the only true God's epigraph, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... over his flannel blouse, dragged a Mexican serape from the corner, and putting it over his shoulders, opened the cabin door, sat down on the doorstep, and leaning back against the door-post, composed himself to meditation. The moon lifted herself slowly over the crest of Deadwood Hill, and looked down, not unkindly, on his broad, white, shaven face, round and smooth as her own disc, encircled with a thin fringe of white hair and whiskers. Indeed, he looked so like the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... a constant furniture for the minds of children, that they may have something to think of when alone, and sing over to themselves. This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine turn, and raise a young meditation. Thus they will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age."—Extract ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... attained a (or the) true good? To whom or to what is it good? Can we stop short of the endeavour to assure ourselves beyond question or doubt that we are right in what answers we render? And where or by what means can we reach this save by turning inward on meditation or reflection, that is by philosophizing? [Greek: Ei philosopheteon philosopheteon, ei de me, philosopheteon; pantos ara philosopheteon]. Thither the mind of man has always turned when the burden of the mystery of its nature and fate has weighed all but intolerably upon it, and turning ...
— Progress and History • Various
... school, and neglected his routine duties at Oxford. His admiration for Wordsworth and Coleridge led him to the Lake country, where he married and settled down. The necessity of providing for his family at last aroused him from his life of meditation and indulgence in opium, and brought him into connection with the periodicals of the day. After the death of his wife in 1840 he moved with his children to the vicinity of Edinburgh, where in somewhat eccentric solitude ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... pot-house—might, for taste and fragrance, have competed with the best that ever was found at the table of prince or peer: nor was such a thing uncommon in that day. This done, and when five or six minutes of meditation—that kind of pleasant meditation which ensues when the inner man is made quite comfortable—had been added to his moderate food and moderate potation, the stranger rose, and with a slow and thoughtful step walked forth from the inn, and took his way towards ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... invitation to rest at his uncle's for a few days. The footpath to the Hall lay through the churchyard, about a quarter of a mile from the village. It was a secluded path, and Elizabeth was wont to retire to it between school hours, and frequently to spend a few moments in silent meditation over her mother's grave. She was gazing upon it, when a voice arrested her attention, saying, "Elizabeth—Miss Morton!" The speaker was Lieutenant Sommerville, accompanied by his friend. To the meeting of the young lovers ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Conan Meriadec there lived a holy man, called Corentin, who retired to a solitude for prayer and meditation, near a fountain in a forest. Every morning a little fish came to him from the fountain; he cut a piece off it for his daily pittance and threw it again into the water, and in an instant the fish became whole. The miracle was repeated every morning. One day ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... The whole etherealized ye see: From topmost golden spray to lowest root, The whole is fruit. Well have ye wrought, And in your honor now shall incense rise. The oaken chair, the cheerful blaze, invite Calm meditation, while the flickering light Casts strange, fantastic shadows on the wall, Where goodly tomes, with ample lading fraught Of gold of wit and gems of fancy rare, Poet and sage, mute witnesses of all, Smile gently on me, as, with sober care, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... though they had not the courage to refuse them. But beyond the immediate circle of the palace she was the queen and the mother of her people. To the nation at large, too, she was equally a heroine, a beautiful idol enshrined in their hearts. Living on "in maiden meditation fancy-free," rejecting the proposals of every prince, disregarding the remonstrances of her subjects, where marriage was spoken of, there was something in the very unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and excited the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Thus, meditation on Sweet Peas Impels the ardent thought, Would maidens all were more like these, With modesty—that true heartsease— Tying the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... race, the illustrious Rishi Apava thus cursed the Vasus in wrath. And having cursed them, the illustrious one set his heart once more on ascetic meditation. And after that Brahmarshi of great power and ascetic wealth had thus in wrath cursed the Vasus, the latter, O king, coming to know of it, speedily came into his asylum. And addressing the Rishi, O bull among kings, they endeavoured to pacify him. But they ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... think it is superstition, pure and unadulterated. I think that soda will cure a sour stomach better than thinking. In my judgment, quinine is a better tonic than meditation. Of course cheerfulness is good and depression bad, but if you can absolutely control the body and all its functions by thought, what is the use of buying coal? Let the mercury go down and keep yourself ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... while he sat in nodding meditation. Tonight the old King wore a disreputably rusty gown of black stuff, with fur about the neck and sleeves of it, and his scant white hair was covered by a very shabby black cap. So he huddled over a small fire in a large stone fireplace ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... leave him Tzar of the Balkans. The photograph which he circulated of himself, seated in a splendid chair upon a promontory by the Black Sea, wearing the appropriate archaic robes, and with a look of profound meditation on his otherwise Machiavellian features, was exactly what he thought a Balkan ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... her. In answer to an invitation to come and spend the summer in the retirement of Ella's home, she says, "Even in this giddy place my heart is full to bursting; should I allow myself more time for meditation it would surely break, and pour forth its lava streams on the thirsty dust of human pride. In the dark, cheerless hour of midnight, my burning, throbbing brain still keeps its restless beating, scarce bestowing the poor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... then he imagined that the fragments selected by the Church to be read to the people during public worship composed the whole Word of God. From that day it became his constant study and delight. A severe illness, brought on by hard study, gave him time for meditation. He felt a strong desire to become a monk, under the belief that by so doing he should attain to holiness. All this time living with the excellent Cotta family, nothing could be more exemplary and orderly ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... and our superiority is the more conspicuous, if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ridiculous jurisprudence of Draco, of Solon, and of Lycurgus." The twelve tables were committed to the memory of the young and the meditation of the old; they were transcribed and illustrated with learned diligence; they had escaped the flames of the Gauls, they subsisted in the age of Justinian, and their subsequent loss has been imperfectly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of the monks of old which is well worth meditation. They taught that "laborare est orare"—labor is worship. They did not, it is true, always practise the wise precept. They did not always make labor a part of their religion. Like Onuphrius, who lived threescore ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... made with a view to an arrangement that might leave France without reason, or with less reason, for constant meditation on revenge One of them is the neutralization of Alsace-Lorraine on the model of Belgium, while another is the distribution of the territory, so that while Alsace is divided between Baden and Bavaria, Lorraine ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... gardens and offices—most of these tenements being larger—all more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children resembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and thus brought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or better circumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in its ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... they are all known." "Cupid and the bear licking his fur" was inscribed, "Little by little." Fedya used to ponder over these pictures; he knew them all to the minutest details; some of them, always the same ones, used to set him dreaming, and afforded him food for meditation; he! knew no other amusements. When the time came to teach him languages and music, Glafira Petrovna engaged, for next to nothing, an old maid, a Swede, with eyes like a hare's, who spoke French and German with mistakes in every alternate ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... from that profound meditation, she started from her seat with flashing eyes—heaving bosom—and an expression of countenance denoting a fixed determination to accomplish some deed from which her better feelings vainly bade her to abstain:—when she ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... weaned from his ideas was true, but still he had, to a certain degree, clung to them, as we do to a habit; but now he felt that his eyes were opened; the silly, almost unfeeling letter of his father upon the occasion of his mother's death, opened his eyes. For a long while Jack was in a melancholy meditation, and then casting his eyes upon his watch, he perceived that it was almost dinner-time. That he could eat his dinner was certain, and he scorned to pretend to feel what he did not. He therefore dressed himself and went down, grave, it is true, but ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... History of Divine Providences, or the Experiences of former Saints; but even then, if those Providences or Experiences cannot be assum'd by us as parallel to our own, nor spoken in our own Names; yet still there ought to be some Turns of Expression that may make it look at least like our own present Meditation, and that may represent it as a History which we our selves are at that time recollecting. I know not one Instance in Scripture, of any later Saint singing any part of a Composure of former Ages, that is not proper for his own Time, without force Expressions ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... tugged at his moustache and gave way to meditation. He was just about also to suggest a stanza, when, upon suddenly raising his head, he espied Pao-yue standing by his side, too timid to give ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "took the Books" as usual, but when, as High Priest, he "ascended the Mount of Ordinances to offer the evening sacrifice," he was as a man walking in thick darkness bewildered and afraid. The prayer was largely a meditation on the heinousness of sin and the righteous judgments of God, and closed with an exaltation of the Cross, with an appeal that the innocent might be spared the punishment of the guilty. The conviction had settled in the old man's mind that "the Lord was visiting upon him and his family ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the glowing summer sky. When he had read it, he again prepared to write a few hasty lines before the post went out. The post-boy was even now sounding his horn through the village as a signal for letters to be ready; and it was well that Mr Benson, in his long morning's meditation, had decided upon the course to be pursued, in case of such an answer as that which he had received from Mrs Bellingham. His ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... knowledge of tactics by silent, solitary study, and earnest meditation in the sequestered retreat of his state-room. His case was somewhat parallel to the Scotchman's—John. Clerk, Esq., of Eldin—who, though he had never been to sea, composed a quarto treatise on fleet-fighting, which to this day remains a text-book; and he ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... thought; exercitation of the intellect[obs3], exercise of the intellect; intellection; reflection, cogitation, consideration, meditation, study, lucubration, speculation, deliberation, pondering; head work, brain work; cerebration; deep reflection; close study, application &c. (attention) 457. abstract thought, abstraction contemplation, musing; brown study &c. (inattention) 458; reverie, Platonism; depth of thought, workings ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... and that remarkable mixture of impatience and intuitive power which characterized his analysis. Again there were evenings when Clark did not want to talk, but slipped off to the piano. Then the engineer saw another man within the man, one who, plunged in profound meditation, sat for hours, while his strong yet delicate fingers explored the keys, interpreting the color of his mood and drawing, as it were, from some mystical source that on which the subtle brain was nourished. And these were periods which the other soon learned ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... tissue of this visible world. The subjects with which my mind was filled found new illustrations in the most unexpected quarters; and every familiar sight and sound furnished the most appropriate examples. During that half-hour of meditation, with my blood quickened by the exercise, and my mind inspired by the thoughts of the service in which I was about to engage, I have lived an intenser life and enjoyed a keener happiness than during all the rest of the week. It was the hour of insight ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... or at Flicoteaux's, there was a dignity in his manner, springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... for a fall would be instant death; and excepting a willow tree, which grew out of the rock immediately under one of the windows, there was nothing to break the descent. However, having remained in one spot so long in meditation, I feared to be observed; and left my post for the present, determining to return to it at the close of day, and indeed at every hour when I could appear ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... meditation that she was unconscious of an approaching footstep in the stillness of the deserted house, till it drew near to the threshold of the sick-room. The night was close and sultry, so she had left the door open, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... A Novelist's Allegory Some Platitudes Concerning Drama Meditation on Finality Wanted—Schooling On Our Dislike of Things as They Are ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... beautiful image of the great poet and philosopher Schelling: "Man is the eye with which the spirit of nature contemplates itself"; and then having qualified with a phrase Schelling's expression, he would turn on those who see in nature manifestation of the rough, the gross, the instinctive, and offer for meditation this saying of Michelet: "Cloth woven by a weaver is just as natural as that a spider weaves. All is in one Being, all is in the Idea and for the Idea, the latter being understood in the way Platonic substantialism has ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... seeking for food. Jerdon states that he does not remember ever having seen a forktail perch; nevertheless the bird frequently flies on to a branch overhanging the brook, and rests there, slowly vibrating its forked tail as if in deep meditation. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... great church of Preston in 1654, and became minister of Garstang, whence, however, in 1662 he was ejected with the two thousand ministers who refused to conform. His after years were passed among old friends and in quiet meditation at Preston. He died of apoplexy about the 20th of January 1663/4. As a religious writer Ambrose has a vividness and freshness of imagination possessed by scarcely any of the Puritan Nonconformists. Many who have no love for Puritan doctrine, nor sympathy with Puritan experience, have ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... undertake the task. I went to the chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, which, in fact, were the abode of wretchedness. By slow and studied approaches the message was disclosed. Johnson made a long pause; he asked if it was seriously intended. He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him. He desired to meet next day, and dine at the Mitre Tavern. At that meeting he gave up all his scruples. On the following day Lord Loughborough conducted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... change. "Three days ago the weather changed here in an hour, and we have had bright weather and hard frost ever since. All the mud disappeared with marvellous rapidity, and the sky became Italian. Taking advantage of such a happy change, I started off yesterday morning (for exercise and meditation) on a scheme I have taken into my head, to walk round the walls of Paris. It is a very odd walk, and will make a good description. Yesterday I turned to the right when I got outside the Barriere de l'Etoile, walked round the wall till I came to the river, and then entered Paris beyond the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... prepared to find you wonderful, and to come to time whenever you want him. I told him your wings weren't grown yet: you were the Sleeping Beauty in the Enchanted Palace; the hour and the man hadn't arrived. You dwelt in maiden meditation, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... second. Everything which Thoreau wrote has this peculiar value, that no other observing powers were like his; no one else so laboriously verified and exhausted the facts; and no other mind rose from them, at will, into so subtile an air of meditation,—meditation too daring to be called devout, by church or world, yet too pure and lofty to merit any lower name. Lycidas has died once more, and has not left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... be lost in meditation. He sat in a rude arm-chair under his favorite fig tree, and his eyes were fixed intently upon the road that wound away from the manor house, through the broad gate, and across the brown sward ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... a fatal candor, that, until he came to consider these things in their true light, when shut away from all outward influences, until compelled to quiet meditation beyond the reach and influence of mere enthusiasm, he had believed with Leclerc, even as Victor was believing now. He could have gone on, who might tell to what fanatical length? had it not been for that fortunate arrest which made a sane ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep and kindly eye. He looked many years older than he really was, but much study and meditation and fasting and prayer, with the arid life he had led as hermit and beggar, could account for that. He is wholly nude when he receives natives, of whatever rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now, a concession to Mr. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... till, in a chase so varied and so long, the unhappy litigant had lost substance, reputation, and almost the use of reason itself, and came before their lordships an object of thoughtless derision to the unreflecting, of compassion to the better-hearted, and of awful meditation to every one who considered that, in a country where excellent laws were administered by upright and incorruptible judges, a man might pursue an almost indisputable claim through all the mazes of litigation; lose fortune, reputation, and reason itself in the chase, and now come ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... been there a whole hour in thought; she who never had wasted a moment in meditation or reverie, and who found the long African day all too short for her busy, abundant, joyous life, that was always full of haste and work, just as a bird's will seem so, though the bird have no more to do than to fly at its will through summer air, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... consolation that was to be bought by forgetfulness? And when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gayety, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit, That in one hour of meditation They would perform ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... best for Jacqueline and Philip to come to their readjustment without her. Long meditation had taught her at last to understand that it was she herself who, unwittingly and unwillingly, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of another year, there comes a tone of sober meditation over us, as we think that it is the last. I would fain let the hour preach. I have little to say but to give voice to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... study, his proseuche {Compilers note: pi, rho, omicron, sigma, epsilon upsilon, chi, eta with stress—[outdoor] place of prayer}—a little aisle of the great temple! Seldom indeed was his reading or meditation there interrupted by sight ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Thompson wuz ridin' herd on a bunch o' cattle belongin' ter ole man Bradish. All we hed ter do wuz ter keep 'em from driftin' too fur, which nat'rally left us much time fer meditation an' conversation. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... proves a patriarchal longevity (if existence be life) cannot make mediocrity anything but a bore, or garrulous commonplace entertaining. There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked color and ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;—these quaint freaks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... called the lusts of the body and the flesh, and must live spiritually; and they understand this to mean that they must discard worldly things, which consist chiefly in riches and honors; that they must walk continually in pious meditation on God, salvation, and eternal life; and must spend their life in prayers and in reading the Word and pious books. Such is their idea of renouncing the world, and living in the spirit and not in ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... penitential life, and such as have (as thy poore father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure and ease;'" and so he proceeded to enlarge on their merits and martyrdom. His grandson, Cresacre More, referring to this scene, says, "By which most humble and heavenly meditation, we may easily guess what a spirit of charity he had gotten by often meditation, that every sight brought him new matter to practice most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... after the destruction of the monarchy of Louis XVI failed. The democracy of the French Revolution was iconoclastic, not creative. It could tear down, but could not rebuild. There were required an increased intelligence and the slow process of thought, a meditation upon the principles for which the people had fought and bled, and an enlarged view of the principles of government, before a republic could be established in France. Napoleon, catching the spirit of the times, gratified his ambition by obtaining the mastery of national ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... idea, and of its force and vivacity superior to the loose conceptions of the imagination. In thinking of our past thoughts we not only delineate out the objects, of which we were thinking, but also conceive the action of the mind in the meditation, that certain JE-NE-SCAI-QUOI, of which it is impossible to give any definition or description, but which every one sufficiently understands. When the memory offers an idea of this, and represents it as past, it is easily conceived how that idea may have more vigour and firmness, than when ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... be feared that this is where the eminent counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation, threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire, at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof of the revealed religious verities. The greatest champion of this view was Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), who in his treatise, Cur Deus Homo proved that God ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... understood; its practical aspects should be fairly and wisely contemplated; its principal duties should be well weighed; its trials, temptations, and besetments should be considered; all that must be done and borne should be the subject of thoughtful meditation before a woman should dare to set her foot upon the hallowed ground of matrimony. No child is capable of considering such grave subjects. An adult mind is scarcely equal to the task. When I say young women should have time to be educated, I mean all young women. It is true, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... witnesses. But what then? With the Pagan worshipper religion ended when the service closed, and he turned from the temple to the world. With the Christian, the highest service only then commences when he leaves the church. Religion, with him, is virtuous action, more than it is meditation or prayer. He prays without ceasing, not by uttering without cessation the language of prayer, but by living holily. Every act of every hour, which is done conscientiously is a prayer, as well as the words ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... an earthly heaven. There is in it a warm, serene, sunny atmosphere; a sky without clouds; the society of love, the solitude of meditation, the inaccessible mountain tops of prayer; the low-lying, quiet valleys, where the wicked cease from troubling, and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of establishing a university in the ancient town of Alcala, where the salubrity of the air, and the sober, tranquil complexion of the scenery, on the beautiful borders of the Henares, seemed well suited to academic study and meditation. He even went so far as to obtain plans at this time for his buildings from a celebrated architect. Other engagements, however, postponed the commencement of the work till 1500, when the cardinal himself laid the cornerstone of the principal college, with a solemn ceremonial, [24] and invocation ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and vehemence. The understanding bestows design and system. The whole man moves under the discipline of his opinions. Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When anything concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the author of their being. They hate Him 'with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and with all their ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... store. Crouching, always singing, on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, and wrapt in meditation, abandoned to the charms of syrup ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... meditation on the part of the king followed this announcement, and then he suddenly demanded where the travellers had come from. The professor replied by a comprehensive sweep of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand sank into meditation. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... condition." The salvation of his soul became all in all to him. His mind "lay fixed on eternity like a horse-leech at the vein." The Bible became precious to him. He read it with new eyes, "as I never did before." "I was indeed then never out of the Bible, either by reading or meditation." The Epistles of St. Paul, which before he "could not away with," were now "sweet and pleasant" to him. He was still "crying out to God that he might know the truth and the way to Heaven and glory." Having ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... intellectual indulgence, in a life the primary purpose of which is not meditation, but action, impair the individual as to his normal usefulness, and thus diffuse by example a deteriorating influence upon the young, and misleading influence upon all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound philosophy such as transcendental ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... preserve us from that excessive self-confidence which is too often a hindrance to fruitful exertion. The financial burden and its relation to the limits of the allied nations' capacity to bear it is a fit subject for meditation when we feel uplifted in self-complacency. Doubtless it is encouraging to watch the symptoms of slow exhaustion displaying themselves in the central empires and to speculate on the consequences of the further fall of the German mark. But these consequences ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... observe the sly, demure over-doings of the hypocrite, and mark the deceitful lines of grave meditation running along that part of his countenance where in others the front of honesty lies open and expanded. I could trace him when he got beyond his depth, where the want of sincerity in religion betrayed his ignorance of its ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... of spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hired fly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wired against the Sunday trespasser, he fell into a despondent meditation upon the political ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... meditation on these suggestions, at length expressed his assent to them, but whether in pretense or sincerity I have not been able to discover. But the inclinations of kings, as they are violent, are often fickle, and at ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... Logicians to be capable of definite meaning, and of being used univocally in the same context; if, or in so far as, this is not the case, we cannot understand one another's reasons nor even pursue in solitary meditation any coherent train of argument. We saw, too, that the meanings of terms were related to one another: some being full correlatives; others partially inclusive one of another, as species of genus; others ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... banquet-hall, served by the Vandal's lackeys and partaking of the sumptuous repast which he had ordered to be prepared in celebration of his anticipated victory. At this point Procopius indulges in a strain of meditation which is not unusual with him: "We may see hereby how Fortune wantons in her pride, how she teaches us that she is mistress of all things, and that she will not suffer Man to have anything which ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... was one long meditation on Evaleen Hale. Arlington was powerless to break the rosy mesh which entangled him. The bright image of the golden-haired New England girl waylaid him again and again. He reached Marietta on a fine, bright morning, and having consigned his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't express to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of country bells—provoking I don't know what vein of musing and meditation, and falling sweetly ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fine spring morning he saw them fly away and never saw them fly back again. Clearly they had removed themselves to less solemn quarters, leaving the great tree, save for fugitive visitations from its comrade the wind, to solitary meditation within the borders of its ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... are you doing' said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground—'Only a little algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime I should choose—who do things quite as trifling without the utility—and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of wedging are deadlocks). See also {gronk}, {locked up}, {hosed}. Describes a {deadlock}ed condition. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged —- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [UNIX] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... was something to eat; but as soon as he reached the helpless little chick he stopped short, bent his head down, looked at it first with one eye, then with the other, and seemed lost in meditation. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... kine, the bay of dog, and the shout of shepherd, softened into sweetest sounds as they travelled from far along the wings of the evening wind. It was the hour when Nature rests, and when man meditates—if the soul of meditation be his. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... satisfied, lit a short pipe, and relapsed into meditation. The long uphill road, ever climbing to where far off showed the tiny whitewashed buildings which were the railway station, seemed interminable this morning. The aged postman addressed strange objurgations to his aged horse and muttered reflections to himself, the innkeeper smoked, and Dickson ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... night; the stars shine out of its soft depths with a brilliant though cold effulgence, reflected glimmeringly in the surrounding waters, which flow in quiet stillness on every side. There is nothing around to disturb the silent eloquence of night, and the flow of thought and meditation. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... this idea, Captain Paget abandoned himself for the moment to profound meditation, seated in his favourite chair, and with his legs extended before the cheerful blaze. He always had a favourite chair in every caravanserai wherein he rested in his manifold wanderings, and he had an unerring instinct which guided ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the duty of some men to leave reforms alone, and to give themselves up to study, meditation, and the creative spirit and mood. Of men of practical ability the world stands in little need; of men of spiritual insight, imaginative force, and creative energy it stands in sore need. When such a gift appears it ought to be sacredly guarded. It may be that it has a work to do which demands ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and he was idolized by his pupils. Always of a deeply religious nature, he chose religious subjects for most of his paintings. In his studio all swearing and ill conduct were forbidden, and his religious paintings were produced only after much prayerful meditation. ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... with my dear "King," as I used to call him. Sometimes I tried my hand with a small rod of my own, but generally I preferred to sit on the grass some distance away. Then my reflections became really deep, and, without knowing what meditation meant, my soul was absorbed in prayer. Far-off sounds reached me, the murmuring of the wind, sometimes a few uncertain notes of music from a military band in the town a long way off; all this imparted a touch of melancholy to my thoughts. Earth ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... of language, stately and splendid imagery, careless opulence of incident, learning, and illustration, wit, wisdom, humor, and philosophy, insight into the complex abysses of human passion, familiarity with the secret motives of human conduct, and profound meditation upon the most sombre problems of human destiny, mark the highest elevation yet reached by the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Mr. Muller left for Bristol. On the journey he was dumb, having no liberty in speaking for Christ or even in giving away tracts, and this led him to reflect. He saw that the so-called 'work of the Lord' had tempted him to substitute action for meditation and communion. He had neglected that still hour' with God which supplies to spiritual life alike its breath and its bread. No lesson is more important for us to learn, yet how slow are we to learn it: that for the lack of habitual seasons set apart for devout meditation upon the word of God ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... go home on Thursday in Passion week, and to spend the first days of the vacation there, that the pleasure of visiting the Warrens and the delight of seeing Gemma might not unfit him for the solemn religious meditation demanded by the Church from all her children at this season. He wrote to Gemma, promising to come on Easter Monday; and went up to his bedroom on Wednesday night with ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... bulwark. 3. Im-preg'na-ble, that can not be moved or shaken. Hor'rent, standing out like bristles. 4. In-sur'gent, rising in opposition to authority. 13. An-ni'hi-lates, destroys. 7. Ru-mi-na'tion, the act of musing, meditation. 9. Breach, a gap or opening made ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... or the Great Muchilinda. Eitel says: "A naga king, the tutelary deity of a lake near which Sakyamuni once sat for seven days absorbed in meditation, whilst the king guarded him." The account (p. 35) in "The Life of the Buddha" is:—"Buddha went to where lived the naga king Muchilinda, and he, wishing to preserve him from the sun and rain, wrapped his body seven times round him, and spread out his hood over his head; and there he remained ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... countenance and deportment of Harry Woodward during the evening before and the earlier part of that day. The plausible serenity of his manner was replaced by unusual gloom, and that abstraction which is produced by deep and absorbing thought. He seemed so completely wrapped up in constant meditation upon some particular subject, that he absolutely forgot to guard himself against observation or remark, by his usual artifice of manner. He walked alone in the garden, a thing he was not accustomed to do; and during these walks he would stop and pause, then go on slowly and musingly, and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he had dreamed it and planned it, on a scale that would satisfy his longings for service, and it made him seriously consider whether there was not some other way that would more equally measure with his strength. He went again to the Ozarks, this time for rest and meditation, and while there began writing "The Shepherd of the Hills." This Story has a peculiar significance for the author. He feels toward it as he can not feel for any of his other books. "The Shepherd of the Hills" was written as a test. The strength of the message he was able to put ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... time the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and summer is in them—the walks by silent, scented paths—the rests in noonday heat,—the joy of herds and flocks,—the power of all shepherd life and meditation,—the life of sunlight upon the world falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside the pacing brooks, soft banks and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... vehemently, as if employing the last spark of divine fire that was left in his decrepit frame. This undaunted confession of a faith which had survived twenty years of inactive meditation, this banner waved by an expiring arm in the face of the eternity that mocks at the transience of human things, filled me with admiration. My eyes moistened, but I continued ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett |
