“Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.”

"Mycerinus" (1849)

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Matthew Arnold166

English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector… 1822–1888

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“The forgetting of all things and of one's self, combined with contemplation, makes a man divine”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

On Shakespeare (1630)
Source: The Complete Poetry

“Now, if the spirit is to contemplate God with God, without intermediary, in this divine light, three things are necessary for a person.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

“Thomas considers that a religious may legitimately aspire to the title and functions of master, but since he could only teach divine things, it is only in relation to the science of divine things that secular sciences can legitimately interest him. This is demanded by the very essence of the contemplative life, the teaching of which is nothing but its immediate extension into the order of the active life.”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Introduction
Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

“The air is pure and serene, lit by a light Divine, and by it we shall discover, fix, and contemplate the eternal Truth, with purified and illuminated eyes. There, too, all things are transformed, are one only Truth, one only image in the mirror of the Wisdom of God; and God created us that we might find, know, and possess this image in our essence and the Purity of our intelligence. Contemplating, applying our minds to this in the Divine Light, with simple and spiritual eyes, we attain to contemplative life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 149

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“To see Good Tennis! What divine joy
Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ?
Let other people play at other things;
The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.”

James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892) English poet, tutor to Prince Albert Victor

Parker's Piece.

“Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book VII, 49

“O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays
Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring,
But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays
In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing;
Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise,
My verse ennoble, and forgive the thing,
If fictions light I mix with truth divine,
And fill these lines with other praise than thine.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

O Musa, tu, che di caduchi allori
Non circondi la fronte in Elicona,
Ma su nel Cielo infra i beati cori
Hai di stelle immortali aurea corona;
Tu spira al petto mio celesti ardori,
Tu rischiara il mio canto, e tu perdona
S'intesso fregj al ver, s'adorno in parte
D'altri diletti, che de' tuoi le carte.
Canto I, stanza 2 (tr. Edward Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“By this sinister elision, this slipping from true remorse, the belief that the suffering we have precipitated ought to ennoble us, or at least make us less ignoble from then on, to disguised self-forgiveness, the belief that suffering in some way ennobles life, so that the precipitation of pain comes, by such a cockneyed algebra, to equal the ennoblement, or at any rate the enrichment, of life, by this characteristically twentieth-century retreat from content into form, from meaning into appearance, from ethics into aesthetics, from aqua into unda, I dulled the pain of that accusing death; and hardened myself, to say nothing of it at Bourani. I was still determined to tell Julie, but at the right time and place, when the exchange rate between confession and the sympathy it evoked looked very likely to be high.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus (1965), Ch. 52

“Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,By contemplation of diviner things.”

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Matthew Arnold166

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“Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.”