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.
- 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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