„All things are ready, if our mind be so.“

— William Shakespeare, Henry V

Source: Henry V

Last update May 22, 2020.

William Shakespeare688

English playwright and poet 1564 - 1616

Related quotes

„Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it. Readiness is ripeness. You do not see the real because your mind is not ready for it.“

— Nisargadatta Maharaj Indian guru 1897 - 1981

Reality
Source: I am That, P.161.

Time

„There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief.“

— Napoleon Hill American author 1883 - 1970

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Hope

„Time bears away all things, even our minds.“

— Virgil, Eclogues

Book IX, line 51
Eclogues (37 BC)
Original: (la) Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque.

Time

„I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.“

— Henry David Thoreau, book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

„one print gets born from the other one, and that is exactly the right thing of it - it keeps the mind ready.“

— Hendrik Werkman Dutch artist 1882 - 1945

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): ..de ene druk wordt uit de andere geboren en dat is juist het mooie, dat houdt de geest vaardig.
In a letter to August Henkels, 23 June 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 105
1940's

„The seed comes when the field is ready, greatness comes when the mind is ready.“

— Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Kratu-A Novel ( Page 270 )

„The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that thing, for the purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all.“

— William James American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842 - 1910

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Sense, Reality, Life

„Our high God is sovereign Wisdom of all: in this low place He arrayed and dight Him full ready in our poor flesh, Himself to do the service and the office of Motherhood in all things.“

— Julian of Norwich English theologian and anchoress 1342 - 1416

Summations, Chapter 60

God, Wisdom

„By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.“

— Richard Dawkins English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service" [1.02], 20 August 2007, timecode 00:13:05"ff"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.

„Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.“

— Niccolo Machiavelli Italian politician, Writer and Author 1469 - 1527

Variant: Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

Men

„Our senses are not receptors so much as reactors and makers of different modalities of space. Perhaps touch is not just skin contact with things, but the very life of things in the mind.“

— Marshall McLuhan Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a communicatio… 1911 - 1980

Source: 1990s and beyond, p. 256

Sense, Life

„All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.“

— Leo Tolstoy, book War and Peace

Vol 2, pt 5, p 236 — Selected Works, Moscow, 1869
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)
Context: The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question — in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

„Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.“

— Baruch Spinoza, book Ethics

Part V, Prop. XLII, Scholium
Ethics (1677)
Original: (la) Et sane arduum debet esse, quod adeo raro reperitur. Qui enim posset fieri, si salus in promptu esset et sine magno labore reperiri posset, ut ab omnibus fere negligeretur? Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt.

Men

„There is but one thing needful — to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our external resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modes of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves from all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.“

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel Swiss philosopher and poet 1821 - 1881

16 July 1848
Only one thing is necessary: to possess God — All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the exterior resources are so many open outlets to the Divinity; so many ways of tasting and of adoring God. We should be able to detach ourselves from all that is perishable and cling absolutely to the eternal and the absolute and enjoy the all else as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.
As translated in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

Happiness, Learning, Sense, Soul