Quotes about thinking
page 40

“It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt.1, ch.11
Atticus Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Hurt, Personality

“I think of you so often you have no idea.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Idea

“They think they're better than everyone else."
"No," said Jace. "I think I'm better than everyone else. An opinion that has been backed up with ample evidence."
Kyle looked at Simon. "Does he always talk like this?"
"Yes.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“Do you want to have sex? I think we should have sex. CASUAL sex.”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

Sex

“What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25

Hunger, Books, World, Understanding

“Tell me, if I take you to my room and put you in my bed, what do you think would happen?"

"I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I'm slot B, and you're tab A.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Drawing

“Thanks for not freaking out," I said.
"Oh, I'm freaking out," Paul promised, his eyes wide. "I just think it's awesome!”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Perhaps it's chasing me. But I don't think it will ever catch me because I am moving fast.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

“I didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.”

John Grisham book The Street Lawyer

Source: The Street Lawyer

Past, Future

“When you have lost hope, you lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Hope, Hope, Relationship

“If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.”

Charlaine Harris book All Together Dead

Source: All Together Dead

Hate, Friendship, Way, Personality

“I really can't think about kissing when I've got a rebellion to incite.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Kiss

“Depression is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Light

“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Money, Happiness

“Is it a wart?" said Malcolm. "I can cure that, but it'll cost you."

"Why does everyone always think it's a wart?”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“It's a full moon here tonight, which makes me think of you. Because, I know that no matter what I am doing or where I am, this moon will always be the same size as yours, half a world away.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

World

“They say that 'home is where the heart is.' I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Home, Heart, Housing

“There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way, we're on our own.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace to Clary, pg. 257
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

God, Way

“It's interesting how young poets think of death while old fogies think of girls.”

Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) Czech bookwriter and writer

Death, Girl

“The only trap I must beware not to fall into, is to think that each day is the same as the next. In fact, each morning brings with it a hidden miracle, and we must pay attention to this miracle.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

“Everything passes,
Everything changes,
Just do what you think you should do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Change

“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive… it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Fly Away Home

“You think it's okay that we're eating Rudolph?"
"Dude," Percy said, "I could eat Prancer and Blitzen, too. I'm HUNGRY.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they’re not being truthful, more often than not it’s because they think truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

Nicholas Sparks book At First Sight

Mayor Gherkin, Chapter 8, p. 120
Source: 2000s, At First Sight (2005)
Context: ... but what I eventually came to understand was that if a woman truly loves you, you can't always expect her to tell the truth. You see, women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they're not being truthful, more often than not it's because they think the truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn't mean they don't love you.

Love, Women, Men, Truth

“We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Color, Change

“Please, I'm a transgender former boy-bander. You think I don't know how to defend myself?”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Boy

“Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

People, Understanding, Problem, Forgetting

“And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Understanding, Fight

“It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Smile, Personality

“No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Beauty

“I’m always thinking about what I’m missing. Even when I’m happy with what I have.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Saving Zoë

Happiness

“Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

People, Books, Dreams

“I think I love you, Cal." -Abra
I'm not good." -Cal
Because you're not good." -Abra”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Love

“He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: The Subtle Knife

Women, Men, World, Way

“All I could think was that right there, in ever passing second, was the future winding itself own. Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

World, Future

“Jeremy: "Who did it? Wait-you think I did. Don't you?"
Ash: "It did cross our minds at one point. Actually, it seemed to keep crossing them. Back and forth. Maybe we should put in a crosswalk.”

L.J. Smith book Daughters of Darkness

Source: Daughters of Darkness

Waiting

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Love, Women, Men, Understanding

“No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

Feeling, Sleep, Cry

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Way

“It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

People, Universe, Time

“It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.”

Henry James book Hawthorne

Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy.

People, World

“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Past

“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 24 (p. 143)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Clothes

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“Before sex, a man isn't thinking clearly and a woman is thinking clearly. After sex, it reverses. The man is thinking clearly and a woman isn't.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Sex

“I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Once, when I was young and true.
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Variant: A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
Source: Enough Rope

Love, Sadness, Heart

“Sometimes I think high school is one long hazy activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

School, Hope

“The silence wasn't uncomfortable or hostile but exhausted--the quiet of people who have a great deal to think about but not a hell of a lot to say.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Hostility, People, Hell, Silence

“You look lousy,"Simon said.
Jace blinked."Seems an odd time to start an insult contest, but if you insist, I could probably think up something good”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Time

“When I was seventeen, I don't think I even knew what love was. But when it's right, it's right, and you just know it.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Love

“Fear you?" she said without thinking. "Good God, I would never do that."

Easing her head back, Westcliff looked at her while a slow smile spread across his face. "No, you wouldn't," he agreed. "You'd spit in the devil's eye if it suited you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

God, Fear, Smile

“Right,” I said. “So the baboon, the crocodile…any other pets I should know about?”
Amos thought for a moment. “Visible ones? No, I think that’s it.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“You must first of all think justly. Don’t sit in judgment over others when you don’t know the truth of the matter.”

Pramoedya Ananta Toer book Bumi Manusia

Source: Bumi Manusia

Truth

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Variant: Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Time

“I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Hate

“Do not think about guys who have broken your heart six ways. It is mentally deranged to chase after heartbreak.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver

Way, Guy, Heart

“Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.”

Gideon Defoe (1975) British writer

Source: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists

People, Religion, Problem

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

Art, Question

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Love, Life, People, Beauty

“Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

God, Food, Reading

“Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Death, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make
comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse
to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Parting

“Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.”

Tom Perrotta Election

Source: Election

Love, People

“I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Source: Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose

Life, People, World

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Fools, Way, Change

“It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

People, World, Time, Country

“She couldn’t very well let him join her in bed like that.
Sure you could.
No I can’t.
Please?
Hush, self, let me think.’ (Grace)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

“I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

People, World, Hope

“Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Life

“Of course, they're not clowning aroundto make me laugh. They're doing their best to live verylives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining."
I’m glad Jay." Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Beauty, Joy

“Happiness comes from the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.”

Storm Jameson (1891–1986) British writer

Life, Happiness, Feeling

“Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Ashes

Suffering, Personality

“I guessed his name was Face of Horror. I wondered how long it had taken his mom to think of that. Bob? No. Sam? No. How about Face of Horror?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Moms

“Time is a keyhole, he thought as he looked up at the stars. Yes, I think so. We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do - the wind that blows through the keyhole- is the breath of all the living universe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Feeling, Star, Universe, Time

“The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.”

Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King

Source: A Hologram for the King

World, History

“Will you get off me!"
"But I'm giving you CPR-"
"I will die before kissing you, Hollywood." Z tried to sit up, his breathing heavy.
"Don't even think about it.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Kiss

“A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man

Books

“I hate it when people let me down, when things are temporary. I think that's why I want to be an architect."
"To build something permanent," I said. "A monument to last a thousand years.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Hate, People

“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#107
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Happiness

“Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Heart

“Fine" I said icily. "I'll do this. but i want it noted that I'm doing this against my will."

"I think we already figured that out, Miss Hathaway.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Failure

“Oh, I used to lie all the time as a kid." I didn't think of it as lying, though. I thought of it as playing make-believe. I told Kitty she was adopted and her real family was in a traveling circus. It's why she took up gymnastics.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Lie, Family, Travel, Lying

“Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Madness in the Family (1988)
Source: Madness in the Family: Stories

People

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Tea

“To learn and think; to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Understanding, Learning

“Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Source: Created for Greater Things

Love

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Parent, Hurt

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.”

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8
Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001)
Context: Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Life, Way, Change

“You think I'd cheat on you?" I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster.

"With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger… in a heartbeat.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Guy, Cheating

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American writer

Sex

“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.”
Cogito, ergo sum.

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Variant: Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.

(English: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")

“A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Men, Pain, People, Universe