“The mind is everything. It is in the mind alone that one feels pure and impure. A man, first of all, must make his own mind guilty and then alone can he see another man's guilt.”
Women Saints of East and West
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Sarada Devi77
Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna 1853–1920Related quotes
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
"Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny." Actually said by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his Miracle of Forgiveness (1969), p. 114. This predates any of the misquotations.
Other forms: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." This is also misattributed to Albert Schweitzer.
James did say: "As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness."
Misattributed
Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères
Ménippe est l'oiseau paré de divers plumages qui ne sont pas à lui. Il ne parle pas, il ne sent pas; il répète des sentiments et des discours, se sert même si naturellement de l'esprit des autres qu'il y est le premier trompé, et qu'il croit souvent dire son goût ou expliquer sa pensée, lorsqu'il n'est que l'écho de quelqu'un qu'il vient de quitter.
Aphorism 40
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
“There is no reality for me but pure thought. Minds alone are interesting.”
Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist
Source: Pène du Bois (1897), p. 96.
Eric Hoffer book The True Believer
Section 10
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements
“Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying..”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.74