The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison… Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
—C. S. Lewis

“All that is to be understood or desired is still not God, but where mind and desire end, in that darkness, God shines.”
—Meister Eckhart

“… the world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it should be known …”
—Basil of Caesarea

“Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you remember Christ crucified and be silent.”
—John of the Cross

“The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.”
—Richard Sibbes

“What a serene and quiet life might you lead if you would leave providing to the God of providence!”

—William Haddon Spurgeon

“Seek by reading and you will find by meditating; cry in prayer and the door will be opened in contemplation.”
— John of the Cross

“As your meditation becomes deeper it will defend you from the perpetual assaults of the outer world. You will hear the busy hum of that world as a distant exterior melody, and know yourself to be in some sort withdrawn from it. You have set a ring of silence between you and it; and behold! within that silence you are free.”
—Evelyn Underhill

“Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.”
― Anthony de Mello

“Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived”
― Baruch Spinoza

“…the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care…(it) continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.,,So much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.”
― Annie Dillard

“The grace of salvation, the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence, dispels this illusion of separation. For when the mind is brought to stillness, and all our strategies of acquisition have dropped, a deeper truth presents itself: we are and have always been one with God and we are all one in God (Jn 17:21).”
― Martin Laird

“I pray you: seek more to embody God than to merely have knowledge of God. For knowledge can deceive us with pride, but a meek, loving awareness will not deceive. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (I Corinthians 8:1). Knowledge leads to travail, whereas awareness leads to rest.”
― The Book of Privy Counselling

“Truly it is a trustworthy word and deserving of every welcome, your almighty Word, Lord, which in such deep silence made its way down from the Father’s royal throne and speaks to us better by its silence. Hear what this loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word speaks to us. He speaks peace for the holy people upon whom reverence for him and his example impose a religious silence.”
― Guerric of Igny

“The point behind mysticism is not to dazzle the mind with ecstatic wonders or heady feelings, but to foster real and lasting changes, for the purpose of becoming more like Christ, which is to say, more compassionate, more forgiving, more committed to serving others and making the world a better place.”
― Carl McColman

“We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.”
― Richard Rohr

“True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.”
― Thomas Merton

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”
― Meister Eckhart

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne