“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”

Bk. II, ch. 1.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
Source: The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 3, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write." by William Makepeace Thackeray?
William Makepeace Thackeray photo
William Makepeace Thackeray 69
novelist 1811–1863

Related quotes

Horace photo

“What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?”

Book I, satire i, line 48
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Ben Jonson photo
Brian Andreas photo

“Waiting for the pen to dry up so he can start fresh with thoughts that are worth new ink.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

James Weldon Johnson photo

“With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Creation, st. 10.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

James Allen photo

“Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902)
Variant: Mind is the Master Power that molds and makes, And we are mind. And ever more we take the tool of thought, and shaping what we will, bring forth a thousand joys, or a thousand ills. We think in secret, and it comes to pass, environment, is but our looking glass.

Karl Barth photo

“Man can certainly keep on lying (and he does so); but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel (he does so); but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God.”

2:2 <!-- p. 317 -->
Paraphrased variant: Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God … but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.
Quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1998) by James Beasley Simpson.
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)
Context: Man can certainly keep on lying (and he does so); but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel (he does so); but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God. He can certainly flee from God (he does so); but he cannot escape Him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God (he does and is so); but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in His hate. He can certainly give himself to isolation (he does so — he thinks, wills and behaves godlessly, and is godless); but even in his isolation he must demonstrate that which he wishes to controvert — the impossibility of playing the "individual" over against God. He may let go of God, but God does not let go of him.

Wilhelm Reich photo

“The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness.”

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness. He is proud of his great generals but not proud of himself. He admires thought which he did not have and not the thought he did have. He believes in things all the more thoroughly the less he comprehends them, and does not believe in the correctness of those ideas which he comprehends most easily.

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Orson Scott Card photo
William Faulkner photo

Related topics