Orison Swett Marden quote: “We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.”

“Where'er a noble deed is wrought,
Where'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts in glad surprise
To higher levels rise.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Santa Filomena

Santa Filomena.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 73

“We must ally ourselves with the oppressed communities of the world. We cannot make our stand as nationalists, we cannot even make our stand as internationalists. We must place our future hopes upon the philosophy of intercommunalism, a philosophy which holds that the rise of imperialism in America transforms all other nations into oppressed communities. In revolutionary love we must make common cause with these oppressed communities.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

Resolutions and Declarations (1970)
To Die For The People

“Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.”

B.C. Forbes (1880–1954) American journalist

“The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.”

Anthony Trollope book He Knew He Was Right

He Knew He Was Right (1869), Ch. 60

“Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Fourth Mansions, Ch. 1, trans. E. Allison Peers (1961), p. 77
Interior Castle (1577)
Context: Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.

“The great necessity is that we should act according to our thoughts, and think according to our acts. But while we are in thought we cannot really act, and while we are in action we cannot really think. The two conditions, of thought and action, are mutually exclusive. Yet they should be related in harmony.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
Context: We are today, as human beings, evolved and cultured far beyond the taboos which are inherent in our culture. This is a very important fact to realise. Probably, to the Crusaders, mere words were potent and evocative to a degree we can't realise. The evocative power of the so-called obscene words must have been very dangerous to the dim-minded, obscure, violent natures of the Middle Ages, and perhaps are still too strong for slow-minded, half-evoked lower natures today. But real culture makes us give to a word only those mental and imaginative reactions which belong to the mind, and saves us from violent and indiscriminate physical reactions which may wreck social decency. In the past, man was too weak-minded, or crude-minded, to contemplate his own physical body and physical functions, without getting all messed up with physical reactions that overpowered him. It is no longer so. Culture and civilisation have taught us to separate the reactions. We now know the act does not necessarily follow on the thought. In fact, thought and action, word and deed, are two separate forms of consciousness, two separate lives which we lead. We need, very sincerely, to keep a connection. But while we think, we do not act, and while we act we do not think. The great necessity is that we should act according to our thoughts, and think according to our acts. But while we are in thought we cannot really act, and while we are in action we cannot really think. The two conditions, of thought and action, are mutually exclusive. Yet they should be related in harmony.

“It is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself

“The ceremony of lifting up our hands in prayer is designed to remind us that we are far removed from God, unless our thoughts rise upward.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 20, Section 5
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

“In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

“We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.”

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