Quotes about thinking

page 5

“I think it's time you met Percy. - Annabeth”

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

“George looked at her for a long moment. Finally he replied, "And why do you find it so hard to think someone might like you and want to do things for you?”

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”

“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.”

“Let's not go and ruin it by thinking too much.”

“A heart ain't a brain
But I think
That I still love
you”

“i think thats one of the problems with the world today, nobody knows who they are. everyone is running around looking for an identity, or trying to borrow one, only they dont know it. they actually think they know who they are and hat they are? theyre just a bunch of schleppers… who have no idea what a search for personal truth and identity really is, which would be alright if they didn't get in your way, but they insist that they know everything and that if you dont live their way then youre not living properly and they want to take your space away… they actually want to somehow get into your space and live in it and change it or destroy it… they just cant believe that you know what you are doing and that you are happy and content with it. you see thats the problem right there. if they could see that then they wouldnt have to feel threatened and feel that they have to destroy you before you destroy them. they just cant get it through their philistine heads that you are happy where you are and dont want to have anything to do with them. my space is mine and thats enough for me.”

“Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.”

“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”

“A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.”

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

“She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of and what you do.”

“Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.”

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

“I suppose nowadays it's all a question of surgery, isn't it? Of course the notion is beautiful, the idea of staying a boy and a child forever, and I think you can. I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.”

“… no one ever became excellent in any exercise whatsoever without beginning from his childhood to endure heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; wherefore those men are entirely deceived who think to be able, at their ease and with all the comforts of the world, to attain an honorable rank. It is not by sleeping but by waking and studying continually that progress is made. [on Luca Della Robbia]”

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

“When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.”

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

“So does that mean you're going to fall in love with me again?
What makes you think i ever stopped?”

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

“If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”

“Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.”

“You don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't.”

“In a way, it made him sad. He couldn't help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing.”

“Few men think; yet all have opinions.”

“… I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.”

“I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some kind of a Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.”

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“Why does this mean so much to you, Jon?"
The Prince turned. "Because he's my friend. Because I always know where he stands, and where I stand with him. Because I think he'd die for me and--and I think I'd die for him. Is that enough?”

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”

“I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that.”

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

“People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.”

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.”

“I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.”

“Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem's sake."

"And yours," he said before he could stop himself.”

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.”

“Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.”

“If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.”

“Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are."

- John Gault”

“Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?”

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”

“Example is not the main thing. It is the only thing. That is, if the one giving the example is not saying to himself, 'Behold I am giving an example.' That spoils it. Anyone thinking of the example he will give to others has lost his simplicity. Only as a man has simplicity can his example influence others.”

“I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't.”

“it's your own fault for encouraging him…, you know. Now he thinks he's a human being.
Neal of Queens cove”

“Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different?”

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

“J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…”

“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.”

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”

“No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

“Um… is that thing?" Frank said.
The horse whinnied angrily.
"I don't think so," Percy guessed. "He just said”

“Nosoi?” Percy planted his feet in a fighting stance. “You know, I keep thinking, I have now killed every single thing in Greek mythology. But the list never seems to end.”

“You haven’t killed me yet,” I noted.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

“From now on you're going to have to think. There's a reason why we're born with brains in our heads, not rocks.”

“Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.”

“I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.”

“I'm not stupid. I know everybody thinks I am. I just don't like answering their questions.”

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinions. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.”

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

“I think I need a drink.'
'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.”

“Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the Lightest part,
Love me in full Being.”

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

“You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.”

“Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought”

“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”

“Every thought we think is creating our future.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

“I decided to accept as true my own thinking.”

“This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”

“nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.”

“Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.”

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.”

“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”

“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

“A bully fights people littler and weaker than he is because he thinks it's fun.”

“You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.”

“Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.”

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

“We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.”

“As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live.”

“We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.”

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”