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Literary notes about Contemplation (AI summary)

Literary works deploy the term "contemplation" in a rich range of contexts that mirror both inner reflection and outward observation. In some passages, it evokes a serene look back to happy reminiscence or hopeful prospect, as when the past and future merge in a mood of reflective felicity [1]. In other writings, contemplation marks a second phase of life—a time for scholarly or spiritual retreat where one examines the nature of existence, moral pitfalls, and the divine [2, 3, 4]. At times, it portrays a subtle state of grief, artistic absorption, or a meditative response to beauty and tragedy, revealing characters who immerse themselves in the very act of seeing, feeling, or understanding the world [5, 6, 7]. Authors also use the concept to denote the deliberate act of isolating a thought or vision from the steady flow of mundane life, prompting both philosophical insight and personal transformation [8, 9, 10]. This versatility demonstrates how contemplation functions as a bridge between aesthetic enjoyment, ethical introspection, and the endless pursuit of knowledge, offering readers a window into the depth of human experience.
  1. At last it enjoys a mood of happy Contemplation of the past with bright prospects for the future.
    — from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser
  2. When they are too old to be soldiers they are to retire from active life and to have a second novitiate of study and contemplation.
    — from The Republic by Plato
  3. Let thy contemplation be on the Most High, and let thy supplication be directed unto Christ without ceasing.
    — from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas
  4. It will consist then principally in pure contemplation itself, free from all the suffering of will and of individuality.
    — from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer
  5. She stood several minutes before the picture in earnest contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery.
    — from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  6. He is still just the calm, unmoved embodiment of Contemplation whose wide eyes see the picture before them.
    — from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  7. He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.
    — from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  8. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man.
    — from The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
  9. In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the beautiful and the good.
    — from Symposium by Plato
  10. We are confronted with a shadowy mysticism, which loses itself in the contemplation of the unseen world.
    — from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon by J. B. Lightfoot

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