like this

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He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. 

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.


―Victor Hugo
Les Misérables

 

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To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. 

To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. 

Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.


—Marcus Aurelius 121 - 180 CE
Meditations 

  

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Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. —Carlos Fuentes

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God sleeps in stone,

breathes in plants,

dreams in animals

and awakens in man.


—Vedic proverb

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Whether we write or speak or do but look 
We are ever unapparent. What we are 
Cannot be transfused into word or book. 
Our soul from us is infinitely far. 
However much we give our thoughts the will 
To be our soul and gesture it abroad, 
Our hearts are incommunicable still. 

In what we show ourselves we are ignored. 
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged 
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming. 
Unto our very selves we are abridged 
When we would utter to our thought our being. 
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams, 
And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.

—Fernando Pessoa

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If you are stone, be magnetic;

if a plant, be sensitive;

if you are human, be love.


—Victor Hugo
Les Miserables

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adoring

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He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown.

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.

―Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables

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certain thoughts are prayers

  

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Certain thoughts are prayers. 

There are moments when,

whatever be the attitude of the body,

the soul is on its knees.

—Victor Hugo

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When Teresa of Avila was asked what she did in prayer, she replied, 

‘I just allow myself to be loved.'

—Anthony de Mello

Sadhana, a Way to God

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