“Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.”
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Quotes about mind page 28
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Address on The Method of Nature http://www.infomotions.com/alex2/authors/emerson-ralph/emerson-method-734/ (1841)
“I will be waiting by candlelight in our tree house of the mind.”
Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Source: Horns
“Minds were made for blowing.”
Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
“Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.”
Gary D. Schmidt (1957) American writer
Source: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
“He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.”
Zadie Smith book The Autograph Man
Source: The Autograph Man
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.”
Loung Ung (1970) American academic
Source: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
“Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do.”
Bryce Courtenay The Power of One
Source: The Power of One
“To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
September 19, 1777, p. 351, often misquoted as being hanged in the morning.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”
John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer
Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
“We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer
Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"
“Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.”
Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint
Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Michael Singer (1945) American landscape architect
Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Ved Mehta (1934) Indian writer
Source: All for Love
Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality
Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian
Source: 2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
“Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.”
Julia Glass book Three Junes
Source: Three Junes
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Pleasure of a Dark Prince
Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher
Source: Equisse d'une Théorie de la Pratique (1977), p. 91
Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights
Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I can not express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being; so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable.
“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
A: Quod est enim maius argumentum nihil eam prodesse quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere?
M: Nullum vero id quidem argumentum est. Nam ut agri non omnes frugiferi sunt qui coluntur [...] sic animi non omnes culti fructum ferunt. Atque, ut in eodem simili verser, ut ager quamvis fertilis sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus; ita est utraque res sine altera debilis. Cultura autem animi philosophia est; haec extrahit vitia radicitus et praeparat animos ad satus accipiendos eaque mandat eis et, ut ita dicam, serit, quae adulta fructus uberrimos ferant.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Book II, Chapter V; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)
Context: A: For what stronger proof can there be of its [philosophy's] uselessness than that some accomplished philosophers lead disgraceful lives?
M: It is no proof at all; for as all cultivated fields are not harvest-yielding [... ] so all cultivated minds do not bear fruit. To continue the figure – as a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; thus each is feeble without the other. But philosophy is the cultivation of the soul. It draws out vices by the root, prepares the mind to receive seed, and commits to it, and, so to speak, sows in it what, when grown, may bear the most abundant fruit.
“The world in your mind is as real as the world outside of it.”
Melissa de la Cruz book The Van Alen Legacy
Source: The Van Alen Legacy
“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”
Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 907
“La-di-dah, just out for a little spin, don't mind me.”
Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
“We sit on the kitchen exchanging these diabolical outgrowths of overfertile minds.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
“Books are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves!”
Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic
The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)
Context: These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.
“nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer
“Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Source: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990
L.J. Smith (1965) American author
Source: Night World, No. 1
Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure
Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii
“I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go”
Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness
Source: Heart of Darkness
“The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”
Edith Hamilton book Mythology
Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
“Hannah leaned against the wall. 'Mind if I call shotgun?'
'Since you're carrying one? Feel free.”
Rachel Caine (1962) American writer
Source: Lord of Misrule
David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger
Livewire interview (2002)
Context: Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods' presence in his life. He is the 21st century man. However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
“Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.”
John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces
“The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet
“Gentleness clears the soul
Love cleans the mind
And makes it Free.”
David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger
Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher
Misattributed to Samuel Adams as early as 1990. Also misattributed to John Adams. Actually originates with Diane Ackerman, who, in an article on Samuel Adams, "The Man Who Made a Revolution", published in the September 6, 1987 issue of the widely circulated Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, wrote: "Early on, he realized that revolutions don't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds." (page numbers vary, article on pp. 20–23 in most editions with the preceding quote on p. 22 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qfQaAAAAIBAJ&pg=4292%2C1111900) Source: Mansour Khalid, The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan's Political Evolution, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1990, p. 17 https://books.google.com/books?id=jZ9yAAAAMAAJ&q=brushfires. Source: Will Bunch, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, Hi-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, New York: Harper, 2010, p. 49. Source: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/it_does_not_require_a_majority_to_prevail_but_rather_an_irate_tireless_mino, https://lists.h-net.org/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&sort=3&list=H-OIEAHC&month=1310, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2013-October/ <br class="br">Misattributed
