Quotes about thinking
page 11

“Hearts are breakable and I think even when you heal, you're never what you were before.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels, character Isabelle

Heart, Heartbreaking

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Feeling

“Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XVI.

“And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Feeling, Soul

“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Namesake

Source: The Namesake

World

“You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Success, Inspirational, Life

“I think it would dismay them to know what it takes to feed you. Not to mention that you could empty their cellars of beer and wine in a single night.' Eragon said. Saphira sniffed.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

Beer, Wine, Night

“I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Universe, Evil

“Tradition:' one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum

People

“Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Municipal Gallery Revisited http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1659/, st. 7 Last Poems (1936-1939) Variant: Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends. Context: You that would judge me, do not judge alone This book or that, come to this hallowed place Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; Think where man's glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.

For Men

“Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Proctor
Source: The Crucible (1953)

Time

“I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Truth, Suffering

“do you think it is
better to be clever than to be good?”
“Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for
nothing unless you are clever.”

Henry James book Washington Square

Source: Washington Square

“Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Time

“The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life

“I remember thinking I just want more. This isn't it. Fame is not the goal. Money is not the goal. To be able to know how to get peace of mind, how to be happy, is something you don't just stumble across. You've got to search for it.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Money, Happiness, Peace, Search

“You can not live your life just based on what everyone else thinks.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Life

“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

On Tom Cruise, Time magazine (8 August 2005)

Life, Behavior

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pain, Fight

“If you think you can - you can!”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“You're simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to…
-To lay her cards out on the table.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

“I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Music, Sense

“They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“And what had he wanted? He'd never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted yesterday to be different from today.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“What would you think if I told you that I wasn’t an Allomancer?” Sazed asked.
“I’d think that you were lying,” Vin said.
“Have you known me to lie before?”
“The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Truth, Lie, Lying, Time

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Life, People, Books, Sense

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Books, World, Fear

“Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Wisdom, Feeling

“Do you think it takes true pain to experience true pleasure?”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Pain, Pleasure

“Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Pain, Pleasure, Light

“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day.”

Romain Rolland book Juan Criistobal

Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)
Source: Jean Christophe Vol I
Context: Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day.
Context: Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can.... Als ich kann.

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

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Variant: You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Source: Pride and Prejudice

Pleasure, Past, Missing You

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave… you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, People, Time

“Sometimes
when you are trying
not to think about something
it keeps popping back in your head
you can't help it
you think about it
and
think about it
and
think about it
until your brain
feels like
a squashed pea.”

Sharon Creech Love That Dog

Source: Love That Dog

Feeling, Help

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

From article "In Defense of Curiosity" appearing in The Saturday Evening Post 208 (August 24, 1935); 8-9, 64-66. As cited in What I Hope to Leave Behind, The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt Edited by Alida M. Black, p 20.
As quoted in Todays Health (October 1966)

Birth

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“You take the flotsam," I tell her, "I'll take the jetsam."
You always get the jetsam,"she says pretending to pout. "Do you ever think if poeple heard our conversations they'd lock us up?"
All the time.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Time

“I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: The Pargiters

Men

“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

People, Music, Business

“Actually, since I'm gay I think I should count for two guys instead of just one. I mean, in me you get the male point of view and you don't have to worry about me wanting to touch your boobies.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Guy

“I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

Learning

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Life, Way

“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Optimism

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

Iris Murdoch book A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.

People, Flowers, Time, Joy

“He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Learning

“Mother told me once that some Westonians privately criticised Dad for retreating so soon. They apparently felt it would have been more dignified to have waited a week or so before running away. I think this view misses the essential point of running away, which is to do it the moment the idea has occurred to you. Only an obsessional procrastinator would cry, “Let’s run for our lives, but not till Wednesday afternoon.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Source: So, Anyway...

Idea, Waiting, Cry

“If rain was God crying, I think God was drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

God, Cry

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Sense, Future, Dependency

“Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure…”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 443
Attributed from posthumous publications

Freedom

“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Anecdote recorded as something that Lincoln said in a conversation with educator Newman Bateman in the Autumn of 1860, in Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah Gilbert Holland, Chapter XVI, p. 287
Posthumous attributions
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.

God, Hate

“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' da castle.
Valerie: Think it'll work?
Miracle Max: It would take a miracle.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Soul, Drink, Solitude, Time

“I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it. The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

“If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

“Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

“We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Way

“The thinking man must … oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. True manhood is too precious a spiritual good for us to surrender any part of it to thoughtlessness.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant : The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.
As quoted in Becoming Vegan : The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-based Diet (2000) by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina, p. 261
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 305; also in The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer (1950), p. 179

Parting

“a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

Hope, Time, Personality

“I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I'm trying to give a little of it back to others. It's one of the greatest pleasures I know.”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

People, Pleasure, Reading

“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

As quoted in The Observer (30 April 1950)

Business, Time

“For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Women

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Fear, Soul, Sea

“It’s not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Moving On

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Law, Time

“Don't think, but look! (PI 66)”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

“My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Time

“I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Life, Star, Understanding, Night

“Jesus insisted that the greatest ritual service is the service of human need. It is an odd thing to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted a ‘church’ service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick. Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of human need. Christian service is not monastic retreat; it is involvement in all the tragedies and problems and demands of the human situation.”

William Barclay (1907–1978) Church of Scotland minister and academic

Source: The Gospel of Matthew: Vol. 2, Chapters 11-28

Life, Sadness, Problem

“Every time you meet a situation you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Time, Courageous

“You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing--
turn your toes out when you walk---
And remember who you are!”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking Glass

“Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

God

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life, Death, Food, Animals

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

People

“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Peace, History, Peaceful

“I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Mathematics

“Why does a man live?
-In order to think about it…”

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Health

“He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.”

Tom Perrotta (1961) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Joe College

Books, Reading

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

People, Heart

“An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 8 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/ Source: The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose Context: An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

“I'm a moldy moldy man
I'm moldy thru and thru
I'm a moldy moldy man
You would not think it true
I'm moldy til my eyeballs
I'm moldy til my toe
I will not dance I shyballs
I'm such a humble Joe.”

John Lennon book In His Own Write

Source: In His Own Write

Dance