"Departure" (1918) from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
“If my mind can conceive it; and my heart can believe it — then I can achieve it.”
Similar to a quote by Jesse Jackson, which is in turn a modification of a quote by Napoleon Hill: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
Misattributed
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
"Fidelity"
Begin to Hope (2006)
Context: I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart...
“In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.”
Source: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
“I had lost my mind and fallen into my heart.”
Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
Variant: Science tells me God must exist.
My mind tells me I'll never understand God.
My heart tells me I'm not meant to.
[Vittoria Vetra]
Source: Angels & Demons
“This I believe with all my heart.”
This I Believe (1952)
Context: I believe in — I am proud to belong to — the United States. Despite shortcomings, from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.
And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown — in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability … and goodness …. of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth — but that we will always make it … survive … endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure — will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage — and his noble essential decency.
This I believe with all my heart.
“I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.”
"Doctor, Doctor, Cut My Throat" (August 1972), in The Tragedy of the Moon (1973), p. 153
General sources
