Quotes about thinking
page 46

“I hate horses. I know people who think that they are noble, graceful animals, but regardless of what a horse looks like from a distance, never forget that it's as likely to step on your foot as look at you.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Hate, People, Animals, Horse

“I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record…”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

“I didn't bother to explain about the glitter in my hair. I figured they could think it was a family trait. We all glittered, just like the Cullens in Twilight.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Double Life

Family

“Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Question, Silence

“Its easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything.”

Jonathan Carroll book Kissing the Beehive

Source: Kissing the Beehive

“Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art”

Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Source: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Art, Universe, Time, Parting

“And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Books

“I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.”

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) Novelist, librarian, nurse

Source: The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories

World

“Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Children, Forgetting

“You can't be real," Delilah murmurs.
"Says who?" I ask. "Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Reading

“You go shake your foundations, Will. I think it's about time I saved myself.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Time

“It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, Learning, Water

“And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Startled by His Furry Shorts

Past

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Time

“Akhlys lunged at Percy, and for a split second he thought: Well, hey, I’m just smoke. She can’t touch me, right?
He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking: LOL, NOOB!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Fate, Imagination

“We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Way, Time

“I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People, Fear

“We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love, Fear, Heart

“Even if it's absurd to think you can change things, it's even more absurd to believe that it is foolish and unimportant to try.”

Peter C. Newman (1929) Canadian journalist

Source: Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power

Change

“I think reality is overrated.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Reality

“Spending time with you just feels… right, somehow. Easy, like the way it's supposed to be. Like it is with my parents. They're just comfortable together, and I remember growing up thinking that one day I wanted to have that, too.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way, Feeling, Parent, Time

“Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the time and the tempo fly
And there's no exit in any direction
'Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes”

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

Dreams, Time, Flying

“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1910s, My November Guest (1915)

Love, Beauty, Autumn, Tree

“There's always a third choice in life. Even if you think you're stuck between two impossible choices, there's always a third way. You just have to look for it.”

Marcus Sedgwick (1968) British writer and illustrator

Source: Revolver

Life, Way

“Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Idea

“Hope implies that you think you have a chance at something.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Hope, Chance

“Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Life

“If we can’t stand up to the never good enough and who do you think you are? we can’t move forward.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”

Louise Penny book Still Life

Source: Still Life

Love, Life, People, Problem

“Kyo Sohma: angrily pointing at Yuki Just like I'll beat you one of these days
Yuki: looking bored Wait wait I think I've heard this one before”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Waiting

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love, Way, Feeling, Personality

“Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.”

Lisa Unger book Sliver of Truth

Source: Sliver of Truth

People, Evil

“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

“You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands - your own.”

Mark Victor Hansen (1948) American writer

Dreams, Future, Personality, Motivational

“But I think we were walking around like we were invincible. And maybe that's a bad way to live your life. Because you're not invincible. Nobody is. And maybe now that we've learned that, we'll be better.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Life, Way, Learning

“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Life, Feeling

“You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

People, Feeling

“The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Dependency

“I think it would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

People, Learning

“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Life, Way

“People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski

Love, Hate, People

“The vamp in McMann’s stared at me. I guess he didn’t like the Goth look. Most of them don’t; somehow they think I’m making fun of them.
Which I totally am.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

“But I don't think of you.

(Howard Roark)”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“I used to believe. I used to think that if I wanted it bad enough, wished hard enough, everything would work out the way It was supposed to. Destiny, like Susannah said.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Way

“The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”

Christopher Hitchens Mortality

Source: Mortality

God

“You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.”

Alasdair Gray book Lanark: A Life in Four Books

Source: Lanark

World, Suffering, Change

“Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

“I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Women, Girl

“When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.”

Katrina Kenison American writer

Source: The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

Beauty, Light

“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”

Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990) Cuban poet/novelist/playwright

Art, Literature

“Maybe we’ll admit this thing we have is perfect, not worth messing around with. And stay together forever. If you’re interested, that is.”
She glanced away. “I could think about that.”
He buried his face in her neck. “Think fast”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Perfection

“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

Source: The City of Dreaming Books

Way, Intelligence, Reading

“I cried to think of how lucky we both were to have found each other, since it was clear that we were the only ones in the world who could understand what we understood in the instantaneous manner in which we understood it.”

Audre Lorde book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Source: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

World, Understanding

“He shook his head in mock sympathy. "I tell you, Sage. Sometimes I think I am the one who needs to take out the restraining order on you.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

God, Courageous

“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.”

Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion

Source: The Divine Invasion

Understanding

“I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Personality

“He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“I dont think that we're meant to understand it all the time. I think that sometimes we just have to have faith.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Faith, Understanding, Time

“As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.”

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American author

Truth

“… sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"
“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

People, Way, Feeling

“sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Love, Heart

“I don't think I can do it alone," I said. I had a feeling thewasn't really meant to be cast alone: as if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Truth, Feeling

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”

Rita Rudner (1953) American comedian

Dogs

“People say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I think they’re wrong: Proximity makes the heart grow fonder.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

People, Heart

“She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence… they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good…”

Eva Ibbotson A Company of Swans

Source: A Company of Swans

Beauty, Intelligence, Passion

“Let’s go, let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

“All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Physics and Reality" in the Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 221, Issue 3 (March 1936)
Variant translation: "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." As it appears in the "Physics and Reality" section of the book "Out of My Later Years" by Albert Einstein (1950)
1930s

Science

“The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Memory

“I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Feeling

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Still Me (1999); also quoted at the Christopher Reeve Foundation http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.geIMLPOpGjF/b.1097025/k.6FF5/Christopher_and_Dana_Reeve.htm <br class="br">Context: When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.

Family, Perseverance

“But now I am six. And I'm clever as clever. And now I think I'll stay six now forever and ever.”

A.A. Milne book Now We Are Six

The End.
Source: Now We Are Six (1927)
Context: When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.