Every kind of activity, even the process of mere thought, must culminate in the absolute quiet of contemplation. Every movement, the movements of body and soul as well as of speech and reasoning, must cease before truth. Truth, be it the ancient truth of Being or the Christian truth of the living God, can reveal itself only in complete human stillness.
--Hannah Arendt
Aquinas stresses the stillness of the soul and recommends the vita activa because it exhausts and therefore 'quietens interior passions" and prepares for contemplation.
