Meditation Quotes

497 Sourced quotes

Wallace Stevens

Mother Teresa

William Shakespeare

Lao Tzu

Ernest Hemingway

Edgar Allan Poe

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

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

Benjamin Franklin

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

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.

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

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

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

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

Michel de Montaigne

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.
Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;
And let us all to meditation.

William Shakespeare

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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....

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.

To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work … coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Truth is the offspring of silence and unbroken meditation.

Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but Essays—that is dispersed meditations.

I'm sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe