Quotes about mind
page 27

“You gotta be rich to be insane, Hol. Losing your mind is not a luxury for the middle class.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Feeling

“The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.”

Confucius book Analects

Source: Analects of Confucius

People

“Once I opened my mind to the concept of a greater power, I never struggled with it. Everywhere I went, I felt and saw the existence of a creative intelligence in this universe, of a loving power larger than myself in nature, in people, everywhere.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, People, Intelligence, Nature

“Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

World, Hope, Change, Reading

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Men, Children, Learning

“And now I understand something so frightening, and wonderful — how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Robert Schumann"
Dream Work (1986)
Source: Blue Pastures

Understanding

“A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Now of Pooh.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)
Context: Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.

Wisdom, Knowledge, Heart

“The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Love

“A woman's mind is her most precious weapon. It must not be employed clumsily or prematurely. Much like the aforementioned knife in the back, a clever gibe is most effective when it is unanticipated.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Variant: Science tells me God must exist.
My mind tells me I'll never understand God.
My heart tells me I'm not meant to.

[Vittoria Vetra]
Source: Angels & Demons

God, Understanding, Science, Heart

“live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested… Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)
Context: Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Love, Drink, Sleep, Time

“Every life is complicated, every mind a kingdom of unmapped mysteries.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Life

“Cruel of heart, lay down my song.
Your reading eyes have done me wrong.
Not for you was the pen bitten,
And the mind wrung, and the song written.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Reading, Heart

“I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Time

“As much as some people would like to believe, for their own peace of mind, that the appearance of evil in this world had a clean cause, the truth was never that simple.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

People, Truth, World, Peace

“Knowing that wishes don’t always come about in the way that we think, but if you believe and keep your mind open, there’s a really good chance they will manifest in some way.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Night Star

Way, Thinking, Chance

“Keep your mind too open, and you never know what might walk in.”

Simon R. Green (1955) British writer

Source: Drinking Midnight Wine

“His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

"The Little Hours" in Here Lies (1939)
Source: Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker

Beauty

“People living in the vanity of their own mind not only destroy themselves, but far too often, they bring destruction to others around them.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

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

People

“Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Victory

“Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Failure

“By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service" [1.02], 20 August 2007, timecode 00:13:05"ff"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.

Funny

“Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Heart, Hurt, Anger

“Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

Color, Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Courage, Heart, Courageous

“The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Truth

“The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems

Water

“I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”

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

Source: Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Volumes 1-4, Diary (1755-1804) and Autobiography

Reading

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Source: Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
Context: Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

Beauty, Beauty

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

Men, Truth

“The birth of the mind is the death of the senses”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Death, Birth, Sense

“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”

Robert Anton Wilson book The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Part I : The Eye in the Pyramid, p. 32
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975)

History, Reality, Sense

“The human mind has a primitive ego defince mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It's called denial.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Variant: The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial.
Source: Inferno

Reality

“Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back… Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our mind.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Secret

“Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Hate, Way

“Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Travel

“I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Life, Dreams, Idea, Water

“Religion is like drugs, it destroys the thinking mind.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Religion, Thinking

“It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)
Source: The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11
Context: The 20th century, with its scores of millions of supernumerary dead, has been called the age of ideology. And the age of ideology, clearly, was a mere hiatus in the age of religion, which shows no sign of expiry. Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.

God, Religion

“Always mind the distance between your dreams and your reality.”

Zoë Heller (1965) British writer

Source: Notes On A Scandal

Dreams, Reality, Motivational

“How do you know your Colossus is the genuine article in the first place?

I read his mind.

I matched his DNA.

I smelled him.

I also did that.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Astonishing X-Men, Volume 1: Gifted

Reading

“I uncapped the blade, flung open the door, and found myself face-to-face with a black pegasus. Its voice spoke in my mind as it clopped away from the sword blade.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“I wonder how she'll make up her mind."
"Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Thinking

“she told me she'd be a phoenix." The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist." "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Dependency

“Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

“Bear in mind, children, that they listen to you because you are kids—not because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us … We never understand what we're praying, and God, in His mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to His wisdom.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) <br class="br">In Concert

Wisdom, God, Children, Understanding

“I read because I have to. It drives everything else from my mind. It lets me escape to find other world.”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

World, Reading

“It's awful to be rich and mind-boggingly handsome and have women fawn over you. My heart bleeds for you. Poor dear, how do you manage?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Women, Heart

“Man, you cannot be real," the human said softly.
"Why not?"
"You just can't."
She laughed a little. "Well, I am." He cleared his throat again. Offered her a lopsided grin.
"Mind if I ask you to prove it?"
"How?"
"Can I touch your hair?”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

“The real reality is there, but everything you KNOW about “it” is in your mind and your
to do with as you like. Conceptualization is art, and YOU ARE THE ARTIST”

Gregory Hill (1941–2000) American writer and founder of Discordianism

Source: Principia Discordia ● Or ● How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger

Art, Reality

“Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Money

“Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.”

Mineko Iwasaki (1949) Japanese Geisha

Source: Geisha, a Life

Parting, Training

“It is the mind that speaks a woman's heart, not the vaginal walls.”

Mary Roach book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Source: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Heart

“Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Despair, Indifference

“As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“The mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Beauty, Time

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Travel

“Mind control won't work on those who are really hardheaded. You know… Creatures like you.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

“But I’m just going to be out there having a tea party with her cats or whatever it is she has in mind."

Adrian”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Cats, Tea

“And now Rocky is begging me to watch Dora the Explorer with him. I understand that millions of kids love Dora and have learned to read or whatever from her show. But I wouldn't mind if Dora fell off a cliff and took her little pals with her”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Forever Princess

Love, Understanding, Learning, Reading

“He had that hungry mind, constantly turning things over, looking not for answers but for understanding.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Understanding

“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"
Collected Poems (1954)
Variant: We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Context: We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Light

“The term “starvation diet” refers to 900 calories a day. I was on one-third of a starvation diet. What do you call that? One word that comes to my mind: “suicide.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Suicide

“Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol.

Her response was, “If it’s only a symbol, to hell with it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Hell, Thinking

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Art, Freedom

“Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand… well, God put a lot of thought into making you.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Men, God

“More gold had been mined from the mind of men than the earth it self”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Men

“Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

Men

“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, 'Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Attitude

“It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Men

“In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: Nightfall One

Light

“His laughter echoed through my mind. I have a beautiful woman in my arms, and am taking her back to my home, where she and I will be alone and able to indulge whatever fantasies we choose. What is there not to enjoy?”

Katie MacAlister (1964) Author

Source: Sex and the Single Vampire

Beauty, Home, Laughter

“A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.”

Gregory Maguire book A Lion Among Men

Source: A Lion Among Men

Disappointment

“One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

Question, Thinking

“Set your mind on a definite goal and observe how quickly the world stands aside to let you pass.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

World

“She can shoot like a dream and she carries tiny grenades in her top, a bit of my addled mind thought. I think I might be in love.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

Love, Dreams, Thinking

“My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: I do not believe in a God who maliciously or arbitrarily interferes in the personal affairs of mankind. My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!

Religion, Universe, Parting