Quotes about the mind and thinking

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

If you would improve, be content to be thought foolish and dull with regard to externals.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.

The first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds

We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.

What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.

Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined thoughts.

Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts.

The blemishes of the mind, like those of the face, increase by age.

Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.

Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.

We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.

Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.

There are as many errors of temper as of mind.

Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.

We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason.

We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.

The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God.

Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

“Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation.

Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities.

Because a man speaks, he thinks he is able to speak about language.

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.

Remark of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.

It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius

Satan (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

The selfish smiling fool and the sullen frowning fool shall be both thought wise that they may be a rod.

One thought fills immensity.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, sleep in the night.

When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head!

Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

ADMIRAL, n. That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.

BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.

COMPROMISE, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

FLOP, v. Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.

FOLLY, n. That “gift and faculty divine” whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.

IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

INTENTION, n. The mind’s sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

NOBLEMAN, n. Nature’s provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant “own,” and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.

PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.

PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.

PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.

REASON, v.i. To weigh probabilities in the scales of desire.

REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.

REASONABLE, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.

REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.

REFLECTION, n. An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the perils that we shall not again encounter.

TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.

WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind endeavours to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.

Strength and weakness of mind are mis-named; they are really only the good or happy arrangement of our bodily organs.

Those who think they have merit persuade themselves that they are honoured by being unhappy, in order to persuade others and themselves that they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.

It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love—Plus many mysteries.

What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty things in an agreeable manner.

Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labour.

The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another.

The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

It is far better to accustom our mind to bear the ills we have than to speculate on those which may befall us.

One sort of inconstancy springs from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone’s opinion, and another more excusable comes from a surfeit of matter.

We admit our faults to repair by our sincerity the evil we have done in the opinion of others.

The health of the mind is not less uncertain than that of the body, and when passions seem furthest removed we are no less in danger of infection than of falling ill when we are well.

There are relapses in the diseases of the mind as in those of the body; what we call a cure is often no more than an intermission or change of disease.

The defects of the mind are like the wounds of the body. Whatever care we take to heal them the scars ever remain, and there is always danger of their reopening.

The reason which often prevents us abandoning a single vice is having so many.

He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content with him deceives himself yet more.

Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their body, or their mind, is beginning to fail.

It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal the want of mind.

A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see.

Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so many resources on the same matter, as the lack of intelligence makes us hesitate at each thing our imagination presents, and hinders us from at first discerning which is the best.

We often comfort ourselves by the weakness of evils, for which reason has not the strength to console us.

The accent of our native country dwells in the heart and mind as well as on the tongue.

Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because they think themselves more clever than we are.

Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

There are virtues which degenerate into vices when they arise from Nature, and others which when acquired are never perfect. For example, reason must teach us to manage our estate and our confidence, while Nature should have given us goodness and valour.

Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.

Penetration has a spice of divination in it which tickles our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.

Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the full extent of its capacities.

The calm or disturbance of our mind does not depend so much on what we regard as the more important things of life, as in a judicious or injudicious arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.

So cold, so icy, that one burns one’s finger at the touch of him! Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!—And for that very reason many think him red-hot.

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Every man must think after his own fashion; for on his own path he finds a truth, or a kind of truth, which helps him through life. But he must not give himself the rein; he must control himself; mere naked instinct does not become him.

If I am to listen to another man’s opinion, it must be expressed positively. Of things problematical I have enough in myself.

It is much easier to put yourself in the position of a mind taken up with the most absolute error, than of one which mirrors to itself half-truths.

If a man thinks about his physical or moral condition, he generally finds that he is ill.

Not every one who has a pregnant thought delivered to him becomes productive; it probably makes him think of something with which he is quite familiar.

Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched.

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

If a man does think too much of himself, he is more than he believes himself to be.

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.

Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as their mortal enemy.

We are all so limited that we always think we are right; and so we may conceive of an extraordinary mind which not only errs but has a positive delight in error.

If a man has always let himself think the world as bad as the adversary represents it to be, he must have become a miserable person.

Truth is at variance with our natures, but not so error; and for a very simple reason. Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as limited, but error flatters us with the belief that in one way or another we are subject to no bounds at all.

That some men think they can still do what they have been able to do, is natural enough; that others think they can do what they have never been able to do, is singular, but not rare.

Men’s prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common-sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterwards incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

Of the best society it used to be said: their speech instructs the mind, and their silence the feelings.

That is why children’s lives are a series of refined judgments, not to say prejudices; and to efface a rapid but partial perception in order to make way for a more general one, time is necessary. To bear this in mind is one of the teacher’s greatest duties.

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.

If anyone meets us who owes us a debt of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe gratitude, without thinking of it!

A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

It should be our earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and reason. It is an endeavour which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be renewed.

Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man’s intentions; where these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the thoughts.

The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.

The general nature of the sceptical mind is its tendency to inquire whether any particular predicate really attaches to any particular object; and the purpose of the inquiry is safely to apply in practice what has thus been discovered and proved.

The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

It does not become an old man to run after the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But he must know where he is, and what the others are aiming at.

Shall we say that a man thinks only when he cannot think out that of which he is thinking?

And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand fold repetition; which shows how limited is man’s mind and destiny.

There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds from green branches. When roses bloom, you see them blooming everywhere.

An author can show no greater respect for his public than by never bringing it what it expects, but what he himself thinks right and proper in that stage of his own and others’ culture in which for the time he finds himself.

Productions are now possible which, without being bad, have no value. They have no value, because they contain nothing; and they are not bad, because a general form of good-workmanship is present to the author’s mind.

That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

If a man sets out to reproach an author with obscurity, he should first of all examine his own mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within. Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

That is the reason why the Bible will never lose its power; because, as long as the world lasts, no one can stand up and say: I grasp it as a whole and understand all the parts of it. But we say humbly: as a whole it is worthy of respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

Shakespeare’s finest dramas are wanting here and there in facility: they are something more than they should be, and for that very reason indicate the great poet.

A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as frozen music; and it was inevitable that many people should shake their heads over his remark. We believe that no better repetition of this fine thought can be given than by calling architecture a speechless music.

Because Albrecht Dürer, with his incomparable talent, could never rise to the idea of the symmetry of beauty, or even to the thought of a fitting conformity to the object in view, are we never to spurn the ground!

Kant taught us the critique of the reason. We must have a critique of the senses if Art in general, and especially German Art, is ever to regain its tone and move forward on the path of life and happiness.

Inattention to the present business, be it what it will; the doing one thing, and thinking at the same time of another, or the attempting to do two things at once, are the never-failing signs of a little, frivolous mind.

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason. Be upon your guard, too, against those, who confess, as their weaknesses, all the cardinal virtues.

Smooth your way to the head, through the heart. The way of reason is a good one; but it is commonly something longer, and perhaps not so sure.

If you would be a favorite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.

A cheerful, easy countenance and behavior are very useful at court; they make fools think you are a good-natured man; and they make designing men think you are an undesigning one.

Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.