Beauty is no quality in things themselves : It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them ; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
Good is not something to contemplate; it is something to be done.
Art is a way of viewing things independently from the principle of sufficient reason.
The more a class of beings possesses the faculty of contemplation, the more it enjoys happiness, not as an accidental concomitant of contemplation but as inherent in it, since contemplation is valuable in itself. It follows that happiness is some form of contemplation.
Art repeats the eternal Ideas apprehended through pure contemplation, the essential and abiding element in all the phenomena of the world.
The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man … that he is destined not merely to act, but also to contemplate.
Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
