Quotes about mind
page 25

“The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.”

Source: The Swan Thieves

“I left parts of myself everywhere,
The way absent-minded people leave
Gloves and umbrellas
Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

Bad luck, People, Sadness, Color

“I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

“Oh! This'll impress you - I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I'm a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all?”

Carrie Fisher book Wishful Drinking

Source: Wishful Drinking

Family

“My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest. My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth.”

Juliet Marillier (1948) New Zealand fiction writer

Strong, Water, Heart, Flying

“There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.”

Tove Jansson book Moominvalley in November

Source: Moominvalley in November

Home, Change, Time

“Clary: Now that I'm in your mind, want to see some mental pictures of Jace?
Simon: I heard that and NO… You've seen him naked?
Clary: Well not entirely but-
Simon: Enough”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Way

“First you say I am a murderer - an agent in league against you - and now I am a deluded heartsick girl! Pray make up your mind so I can scoff at you with precision!”

Gordon Dahlquist (1961) American writer

Source: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, Volume Two

Girl

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Personality

“Different elevator music was playing since my last visit-that old disco song "Stayin' Alive." A terrifying image flashed through my mind of Apollo in bell-bottom pants and a slinky silk shirt.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Music

“My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

“We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

Life, Dreams, Reading

“I don't mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much--so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Life, Women, Feeling, Learning

“A beach house isn't just real estate. It's a state of mind.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Housing

“All of life, I wanted to tell him, is in our minds. Where else does it take place, where else do we add up what it means to us and subtract what we have lost? An event is just an event until some person attaches meaning to it.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

Life, Personality

“I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

“Small minds have always lashed out at what they don't understand.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

Understanding

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Imagination, Country

“Books are the carriers of civilization… They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) American historian and author

Variant: Books are... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

Books, Teachers

“Magnus, you were trying to flirt with your own plate."

"I'm a very open-minded sort of fellow!”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

“My invite must have gotten lost in the mail," she said venomously. "But I don't mind crashing this party.

-Maximum Ride talking to Max II”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

“You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Source: I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Death, Wisdom, Birth

“Consistency is the sign of a narrow mind.”

Glen Cook (1944) American fiction writer

“Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Time, Wise

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 10
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

People, Business

“Do you mind if I don't smoke?”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

As quoted by Josiah Quincy III, in Looking Toward Sunset : From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected (1865) by Lydia Maria Francis Child, p. 431
Attributed

Exercises, Horse

“I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

War with Honour http://books.google.com/books?id=QmQDAAAAMAAJ&q=&quot;I+wrote+somewhere+once+that+the+third+rate+mind+was+only+happy+when+it+was+thinking+with+the+majority+the+second+rate+mind+was+only+happy+when+it+was+with+the+minority+and+a+first+rate+mind+was+only+happy+when+it+was+thinking&quot;, Macmillan War Pamphlets, Issue 2 (1940).

Happiness, Thinking

“It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.”

Andrew Sean Greer (1970) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Confessions Of Max Tivoli

Happiness, People, Imagination, Star

“The mind of man is capable of anything.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

For Men

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude…”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)
Source: O May I Join the Choir Invisible! And Other Favourite Poems
Context: O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.
Context: O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.

Dead

“The measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“MINDS ARE UNIQUE. They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people's, but it is never exactly the same experience.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

People, Way

“To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Pain

“It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Feeling

“Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

World

“I unbuckled my seat belt.
“Are you going to jump onto his car?” Julie asked. “I can get closer.”
“What are you, out of your mind? No, I’m not jumping on his car. That only works in movies.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Cars

“There wasn't a second that passed when you weren't on my mind. You own me, Eva. Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I belong to you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Pain, Hurt

“Fezzik's in trouble, bubble bubble,
His brain is just not in the pink,
His mind is rubble, rub-a-dub double,
Because everyone needs him to think.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

February 3, 1860
Journals (1838-1859)
Source: http://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/writings_journals_pdfs/J15f4-f6.pdf#page=289
Source: Journal #14

Fools

“I'm terrified that I will never be able to put him from my mind. I don't love him but I'm afraid that he will make it impossible for me ever to love anyone else.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: The Devil's Web

Love

“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

p. 333 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7725710M/Peter's_Quotations Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977)

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Books, World, Hope, Strong

“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

People, Time

“I've got a good mind to go out and join a club and beat you over the head with it.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Love, Friendship, Heart

“And for the first time in my life, I saw something new reflected in the eyes that saw me. Respect. It taught me a very valuable lesson. That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others”

Vikas Swarup (1961) Indian novelist and diplomat

Source: Q A: Slumdog Millionaire

Life, Money, Dreams, Time

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Soul, Silence

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

People, Books, Time, Reading

“Whatever colors you have in your mind. I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Lay Lady Lay

Color

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Love, Flowers, Heart Touching, For Her

“Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. Courage moral and physical: “anima”—the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Courage, Thinking, Sense

“You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

“The emerging woman… will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied… strength and beauty must go together.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Beauty, Soul, Strong, Heart

“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.”

George Bernard Shaw The Apple Cart

The Apple Cart (1928), Act I
1920s

Men

“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard”

Richard Brautigan book Trout Fishing in America

Source: Trout Fishing in America

Birthday, Thinking

“Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Freedom, Light, Past

“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pleasure, Feeling, Change, Childhood

“Busy your mind with the concepts of harmony, health, peace, and good will, and wonders will happen in your life.”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind -

Life, Health, Peace, Business

“And what, if you don’t mind me asking, is really important?”

Valkyrie holds her hand palm upwards, and it starts to glow from within. She smiles at him.

“Magic,” she says.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Dying of the Light

Smile

“It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.”

Ina May Gaskin (1940) American midwife

Source: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

“Remembering is just an invention of the mind… It means that if you want to, you can remember anything, whether it happened or not… You don't need a time machine if you can remember.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

Time

“If you don't mind a word of advice, one never asks a lady to set her own price. If you have to ask, the answer will always be more than you can afford.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: A Kiss at Midnight

“Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Reality, Time

“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Thinking

“In my mind, the sexiest thing in the world is the feeling that you’re wanted.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

World, Feeling

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

“The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind
about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“the mind is a neural computer”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

“Each of us must live off the fruit of his thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow, next month and next year, you will mold your life and determine your future. You are guided by your mind.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Life, Thinking, Future

“But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63 (2011), Chapter Final Notes, page 1030,(First Scribner hardcover edition November 2011)
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210722191755/https://libquotes.com/stephen-king/quote/lbj3k9y Archived] from [https://libquotes.com/stephen-king/quote/lbj3k9y the original

Love, Star, Thinking, Heart

“Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Training

“Is it possible to specialize in more than one element?"
She laughed and shook her head. "No. Too much power. No one could handle all that magic, not without losing her mind."
Oh. Great.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

“You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Past

“… it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Nature, Suffering

“If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Motivation, Universe, Evil

“She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth.
Although my mind was heaven-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died, as quoted in Calculusː Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Unsourced variant: I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body's shadow lies here.

“This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Life, Youth, World, Imagination

“Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”

Rebecca Stead book Liar & Spy

Source: Liar & Spy

People

“An active mind didn't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Variant: See, this was his kind of decorating. An active mind don't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers
Source: Lover Unbound

Books

“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300
1970s
Context: One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.

Pain, People, Science, Reading