Meditation Quotes

498 Sourced quotes

Wallace Stevens

Cicero

Lao Tzu

Ernest Hemingway

Edgar Allan Poe

Mother Teresa

Bob Marley

What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.

Wallace Stevens

When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts.

Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.

I look upon the pleasure which we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life... It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of Nature, and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation.

An idea is a meteor; at the moment of success, the accumulated meditations which have preceded it open a little, and a spark flashes forth from it....

Whatever forms of meditation you practice, the most important point is to apply mindfulness continuously, and make a sustained effort. It is unrealistic to expect results from meditation within a short period of time. What is required is continuous sustained effort.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

You can just imagine if everyone on earth did have one day where we just put all our minds together regardless where the force is, as long as it's positive, and just meditate for even a hour that day. And just live nice with them nice meditation. I mean, now, the climate would be nice, the smog would a leave

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

Michel de Montaigne

In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

What acts as a far more effective circumstance for generating compassion and what, in fact, rouses us from our comfortable meditation seat is actually seeing or hearing others - encountering others directly, not just conceptually in our imagination.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called "work."

Jean de La Bruyère

To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.

William Shakespeare

We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

Ernest Hemingway

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

Edgar Allan Poe

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life.

An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.

Try with all your might to comprehend the decrees of the high command, but only up to a certain point; then avoid further meditation.

I don't regret anything [about] meditation, I still believe in and occasionally use it. I don't regret any of that. I don't regret taking drugs, because they helped me. I don't advocate them for everybody because I don't think I should. But for me it was good, India was good for me, and I met Yoko just before I went to India and had a lot of time to think things out there. Three months just meditating and thinking, and I came home and fell in love with Yoko and that was the end of it. And it's beautiful.

Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.

Benjamin Franklin