Quotes about mind
page 18

“It's the age-old battle between mind and heart, which seldom want the same thing.”

Source: Inferno

“Religion, the dominion of the human mind;
Property, the dominion of human needs; and
Government, the dominion of human conduct,
represent the stronghold of man's enslavement
and all the horrors it entails.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Religion

“I drink in his wholeness, the soudness of his body and mind. It runs through me like the morphling they give me in the hospital, dulling the pain of the last weeks.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Pain, Drink

“Do you know what pain is, Cammie? It’s the
body’s physical response to imminent harm.
It is the mind’s way of telling us to move our
hand off the stove or let go of the broken
glass.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Pain, Way

“The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is trained well, it can create enormous wealth in what seems to be an instant.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Training, Wealth

“Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.”

Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933) American artist, novelist, short story writer

Books

“Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Sadness, Feeling

“All the while, my mind reeled with what had happened.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying.”

Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Death, Fear, Law, Soul

“… Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.”

Terry Goodkind book Soul of the Fire

Source: Soul of the Fire

People, Lie

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Happiness

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Happiness, Dependency

“The mind-blowing, ridiculous sex which was the stuff of both poetry and porn - so unlike anything else I had ever experienced before.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Sex

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life's too short to worry about what other people do or don't do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Life, People, Idea

“Rogue Squadron doesn’t run. Unless we really, really have to."
"No, this will be Wraith Squadron’s mission."
"We don’t mind running. Even when we don’t have to.”

Aaron Allston book Solo Command

Source: Solo Command

“A library is a hospital for the mind.”

- Anonymous”

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) American writer

“The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Tradition and the Individual Talent: An Essay

Feeling

“Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life

“Never mind that,” said Will. “I’m boasting of my investigative skills, and I would prefer to do it without interruption. Where was I?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“out of sight, out of mind”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“When a person is going through a hard time, his mind wants to give up. Satan knows that if he can defeat us in our mind, he can defeat us in our experience. That’s why it is so important that we not lose heart, grow weary and faint.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

Time, Heart, Personality

“Women were excited after sex, wired becasue in their minds the relationship was on beginning. Men went to sleep m the because for the orgasm had arrived and the relationship was done.”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Pleasure

Women, Men, Sex, Sleep

“Wake the sleeper must, and confront his fears, or risk being lost in the dark places of the mind forever.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Fear

“The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--but
truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Truth, Fear, Rage, Time

“Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

Heart, love

“It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Law, History, Freedom

“A work of art really is above all an adventure of the mind.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Art

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast." ~”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Life, Happiness, Thinking, Heart

“The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there”

Patricia A. McKillip book The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

Source: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“What I think is all I have left. My mind is the only thing that makes me different from a fancy toaster. What we think does matter-it's all we truly have.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Fox Inheritance

Thinking

“Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Asfixia

“It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Education, Personality, Country

“Will you marry me, vile and abominable girl that you are?

Yes, but, mind, it only to save my neck from being wrung!”

Georgette Heyer book The Grand Sophy

Source: The Grand Sophy

Girl

“The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.”

Robin McKinley book Sunshine

Source: Sunshine

“She genuinely likes people. All people, not just a select few she's spent years making up her mind about.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People

“If only his mind were as easy to fix as his body.”

Han Nolan (1956) American children's writer

Source: Crazy

“Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

Literature, Problem

“Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known.”

Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar

Source: The Temple of My Familiar

People, Understanding, Nature

“The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Thinking, Time

“Here's a freebie: Don't play poker with a kid who can read minds.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

Reading

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Alcohol, Drink

“Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean,
we can't separate ourselves from one another.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, Sun, Parting, Sea

“I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: It Chooses You

Water

“Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Men, Hate, World

“If my mind can conceive it; and my heart can believe it — then I can achieve it.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

Similar to a quote by Jesse Jackson, which is in turn a modification of a quote by Napoleon Hill: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
Misattributed
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey

Heart, Wise, Deep, Success

“A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Vor Game

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)

Change

“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Source: Beowulf

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Perfection

“… most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: Red: The Heroic Rescue

Women, Men, Strong, Sea

“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Color, Sense

“If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Way

“There's in my mind a…
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Source: Poems, 1972-1982

Girl

“I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.”

Alan Moore book From Hell

Source: From Hell

Men, Hell

“The Last Supper is supposed to be thirteen men. Who is this woman?

"Everyone misses it, our preconceived notions of this scene are so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Men

“If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, `more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. `It's all in the mind.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Thinking

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way, Singing

“The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

“Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Books, Light

“Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

"The Englishman of Etretat"

Madness

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve regardless of how many times you may have failed in the past or how lofty your aims and hopes may be.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Hope, Time, Past

“Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Men, Tear, Light, Heart

“Morality is the weakness of the mind.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

“Sometimes I would open my eyes when we were kissing, I would watch him and I could see it. I could actually see LOVE - not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Kiss

“In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“Begin each day with the blueprint of my deepest values FIRMLY in mind then when challenges come, make decisions BASED on those values.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Decision

“The words given voice inside the mind are not always clear, however; they can be gentle and elliptical, what the prophets call the, the daughter of the voice of God, she who speaks in whispers and half-seen images.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

God, Daughters

“Love is the virtue of the Heart,
Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind,
Decision is the virtue of the Will,
Courage is the virtue of the Spirit.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Love, Courage, Decision, Heart

“All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Dreams

“I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Pleasure

“We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, Feeling, Time, Clothes

“We will not just say, "I love him very much," but instead, "I will do something so that he will suffer less." The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Love, Suffering, Personality

“… maybe, in the face of abandonment, we are all the same; maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

Source: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Love

“Making Room:
When I first met him, I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there'd be room for him to stay.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"Italy", Ch. 18, p. 182
Source: Report to Greco (1965)

Happiness, Bird

“You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Variant: The mind is a remarcable thing. Just because you can’t see the wound doesn’t mean it isn’t hurting
Source: The Pact

Time, Hurt

“It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”

Milan Kundera book Encounter

Source: Encounter

Truth, Understanding

“Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Doktor Sleepless, Volume 1: Engines of Desire

Dreams, Idea, Madness

“I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”

Donald J. Trump book Trump: The Art of the Deal

As quoted in "Donald Trump has read a lot of books on China: 'I understand the Chinese mind'" http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/05/donald-trump-i-understand-the-chinese-mind.html, Los Angeles Times (3 May 2011), and in Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2015/08/24/playing-the-chinese-trump-card/ (August 2015) <br class="br">2010s, 2011 <br class="br">Source: The Art of the Deal

Money, Understanding

“Two girls called me closed minded. I tell them that they are so open-minded their brains leaked out.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

Girl

“In the future, I'll be braver, she told herself. In the future, I will always speak my mind, eloquently, passionately.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Passion, Future

“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Source: Earth House Hold

“And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Reading

“Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

Isaac Asimov book Forward the Foundation

Source: Forward the Foundation

Art

“We think of mortality so little these days…
I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones.
Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I:
As I am so will you be…”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Death, Thinking

“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Peace

“Force a hand, and it will fight you. But convince and mind to think as you want it to think, an you have an ally”

Dan Brown book Digital Fortress

Source: Digital Fortress

Thinking, Fight

“We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

“It is important to speak your truth, not to convince anyone else of it. Everyone must make up their own minds.”

Barbara Marciniak (1928–2012)

Source: Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

Truth

“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Variant: She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
Source: Beloved

Friendship, For Friend

“You come back and you do it right now," Morgead bellowed in her ears and in her mind. "Right now! Do you hear me?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

“Never pass up new experiences [Scarlett], They enrich the mind." - Rhett Butler”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

“The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!”

Alexander Pope Eloisa to Abelard

Source: Eloisa to Abelard

World, Forgetting

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Faith, Dogs, Question

“It was one of God's jokes that such a dumb mind had been put in such an eloquent body.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

God

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Way, Singing

“And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Hurt