James A. Garfield Quotes

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.

Presence remains even amidst worldly activities. Stillness is there even when you're doing something quickly, like rushing to answer the phone. Otherwise you would be condemned to moving in slow motion.

Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm.

As the moon's fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion.

Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice.

The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective.

A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it wise and to be praised, But wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still waters.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

The master action, to move forward is a form of inaction; being still and quiet.

No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the nightbirds will start singing.

Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of gold. No ripple on the river, no stir in field or fold, All gleams but naught doth glisten, but the far-off unseen sea. Forget days past, heart broken, put all memory by! No grief on the green hillside, no pity in the sky, Joy that may not be spoken fills mead and flower and tree.

It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

Waight and measure take away strife.

The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

... not only is life put in new patterns from the air, but it is somehow arrested, frozen into form. (The leaping hare is caught in a marble panel.) A glaze is put over life. There is no flaw, no crack in the surface; a still reservoir, no ripple on its face. Looking down from the air that morning, I felt that stillness rested like a light over the earth. The waterfalls seemed frozen solid; the tops of the trees were still; the river hardly stirred, a serpent gently moving under its shimmering skin.

Retire to the center of your being, which is calmness.

We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.

There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object.

Learn this from water: loud splashes the brook but the oceans depth are calm.

There's nobody living who couldn't stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall .... Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting. Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it .... as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.

What I’ve learned through my meditation is a sense of equanimity, a sense of all things being equal.

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.