Calm Reflection Quotes

It is marvelous that I have walked for five years along the precipices of the Revolution without falling over them, and that I am still living; and I rest my head calmly upon the pillow of my writings... I have dreamed of a Republic such as all the world would have adored. I could never have believed that men could be so ferocious and so unjust.

I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my children & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.

God is a spirit and converses with us in a quiet atmosphere because our minds are not capable of listening to his voice when they are filled with noise and confusion.

Especially being around young people, ... It helps put things in the proper perspective as you return back to the chaos of politics.

I considered calmly that I was born to write.

He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself: A day of dappled seaborne clouds.

Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.

Give not reins to your inflamed passions: take time and a little delay; impetuosity manages all things badly.

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.

The most peaceful thing in the world is plowing a field. Chances are you’ll do your best thinking that way. And that’s why I’ve always thought and said, farmers are the smartest people in the world, they don’t go for high hats and they can spot a phony a mile off.

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the “intellectual love of God.” Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.

It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.

… in a tense situation, if time could be given for everyone to discuss what was going on before they actually went to war, we might come to our senses. Most of us are taught as children to count to 30 before we open our mouths when we were angry, and that same lesson should apply to nations.

Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' slows the world down.

When an argument is over, how many weighty reasons does a man recollect which his heat and violence made him utterly forget?

Your anger will cool into hardened passionate insight if you wait a day. Most of the things that make me angry I let them sit. The heat that remains will be sufficient. The stuff that evaporates is the stuff that would have simply offended or made it histrionic.

Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.