Quotes about thinking

page 36

“I think that everything he did, feeding the poor, giving money to friends in need, it was all a way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.”

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

“You sure you don't need your Prince Charming to come and save you?
Sure, do you have one handy?
Oh, I think I could scrounge one up somewhere. As often as I have to rescue you.”

“As they spoke, the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu, Eric?”

“Everyone probably thinks that I'm a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I'd rather read a book.”

“I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.”

“We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.”

“Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.”

“Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.”

“In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'
No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.”

“It's not always easy being her daughter.'

I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.”

“People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.”

“People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.”

“Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.”

“If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.”

“Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.”

“I seriously needed an extra-strength magic pillow, because my ba refused to stay put. [And no, Sadie, I don't think wrapping my head in duct tape would've worked either. ]”

“I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.”

“You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.”

“I just don't want you to worry about me, or think you've met me, or waste your time anymore.”

“Holly: Seven and a half hours to save the world. Isn’t there some law that says we get twenty-four?
Artemis I don't think Opal pays much attention to laws.”

“He shook his head. “No. Because there's no one else out there who understands you like I do.”
I waited for more. “That's it? You're not going to elaborate on what that means?”
Those green eyes held me. “I don't think I need to.”

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

“Now," Graves finally said, "anyone else want to piss me off? Anyone else think this is a goddamn?”

“Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know.
-Songs of Sapphique”

“It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it.”

“Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.”

“Always tell what you feel. Do what you think…”

“There are no absolutes in relationships. You can't take anything for granted. You can count on absolutely nothing but the unexpected. You only get in trouble when you start thinking that you're some kind of exception to the rule.”

“It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our every-day duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt take us at our own valuation.”

“Above all, never think you're not good enough. Never think that. In life people will take you at your own reckoning.”

“I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.”

“Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.”

“My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams.”

“People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.”

“Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones”

“Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.”

“We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.”

“It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.”

“I think that others can drive a creature to naughtiness, always accusing and blaming them. After a while it must make the creature unhappy and drive him… to be naughty, because nobody expects them to be good…”

“I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending”

“Some people think they have discernment when actually they are just suspicious..

Suspicion comes out of the unrenewed mind; discernment comes out of the renewed spirit.”

“I also think he is given to disguises… Sometimes he wears spectacles and sometimes he does not. And twice he has worn an extremely peculiar hat. Inside.”

“I think if you study--if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else.”

“I think everybody should be nice to everybody.”

“Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.”

“That's how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It recreates some forgotten terror. Something we'd like to think we're grown beyond. But it can still scare us to tears. It's something you'd hoped was healed.”

“You become what you think about”

“But I'm not ready to stop listening to the screwed-up inner voice that's been ordering me around for a lifetime. My head thinks it can kill me… and go on living without me.”

“Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.”

“She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.”

“I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.”

“All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.”

“Grief is when you feel so helpless and stupid that you think nothing will ever be right again, and your macaroni and cheese tastes like sawdust, and you can't even jerk off because it seems like too much trouble.”

“The greatest sin is to think yourself weak”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

“I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.”

“What do you think Dimitri? Is this a good idea, Dimitri? Please give us your blessing so that we can fall down and worship you, Dimitri.”

“… that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.
(Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet. It’s great when I’m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here?”

“I have lost everything, Han thought. Then he corrected himself. Every time I think I’ve lost everything, I find there’s still something else to lose.”

“When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.”

“It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought.”

“Sometimes I think I live more closely to the past than the present.”

“As long as you live, you hope. You think that everything will just… get better.”

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or… or…” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”

“I don't think he could ever be a serial killer. He's way too shy. That Ted Bundy guy, he was pretty outgoing, from what I heard. -Jess about Doug p. 107”

“You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.”

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”

“So Mr. Bass why do you think you should become an Usher?" asked the interviewer. Chuck smiled.

Because I'm Chuck Bass.”

“I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.”

“Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain, I think. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't matter.”

“What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.”

“It all depends on whatyou're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish.”

“If you don't like something, change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.”

“It's funny how different people are. If I'd been this kid and someone was snarling "Ordering a pizza?" at me, without even thinking, I would have snarled back "Yeah. You want pepperoni?"
-Maximum Ride”

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”

“[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds.”

“The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.”

“If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.”

“Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me… only he's an imbecile.”

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or… or what”

“Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.”

“What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?”

“How do you fight someone smarter than yourself?' Rand Whispered. 'The answer is simple. You make her think that you are sitting down across the table from her, ready to play her game. Then you punch her in the face as hard as you can.”

“What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?”

“I don't like to think of myself as a 'virgin'. I prefer to think of myself as 'sexually incomplete'. You know. Like I haven't finished the course yet.”

“I think they should have a Barbie with a buzz cut.”

“There's a boy who they call Pony! He's always acting gross and horny! He thinks he's got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear!”

“Jessica swallowed. "I think you had better stick to English."

"But Italian is so moving," Dain said.

"To ho voluto dal primo che ti vedi." I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you.

"Mi tormenti ancora." You've tormented me ever since.”

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic?… Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

“Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”

“I think she just asked if she could touch my mango.”

“Don't think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses.”

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

“I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being”

“Internet porn makes everything more reasonable -- once you've realized there is a massive subculture of upwardly mobile people who think it's erotic to see an Asian woman giving a hand job to a javelina, nothing else in the world seems crazy.”