Quotes about thought
page 14

“What if true enlightenment is the peace we feel when we are no longer resisting any thought or feeling that may come to touch us regardless of whether it is positive or negative?”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Peace, Feeling

“The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now.... You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997)

Sense

“Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking. The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the painbody, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts....For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become "you."”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Thinking, Pain, Anger, Feeling

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life....The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997) p. 25

Life, Pain, Parting, Self-confidence

“As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997)

Self-confidence, Thinking, Feeling

“When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997) p. 16

Imagination, Time, Past, Future

“What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. “I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.””

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997) Introduction

Self-confidence, Feeling

“Thoughts and feelings are not mistakes, and they are not asking to be HEALED. They are asking to be HELD, here, now, lightly, in the loving arms of present awareness…”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

“Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy. The extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude (of the others). Feuerbach’s great achievement is: (1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned;(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory; (3) His opposing of the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole, p. 64.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Religion, Support, Self-confidence, World

“It seems that the disenchantment of fate (though underestimated) was a milestone on the path of human development, the day we doubted ways of fate could only be compared to a Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. The first thought approach of modernity is the contradiction of destiny, with its sense of divine power ruling from the outer planes all phenomena and events happening in real world.”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Source: We'll go asleep, poems and ballads, "An innocent twist of fate" pg. 46

World, Way, Sense, Fate

“Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

As A Man Thinketh (1902)

Joy, Suffering

“for like 8 months i thought covid was one of those joke diseases where you ask "what's covid" and the other guy tells tou to suck his nuts”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1350738078453755909] <br class="br">Tweets by year, 2021

Guy, Disease

“Balance your thoughts with action.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 43

“My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid - not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 73
Born a Crime

Moms, Decision, World, Sense

“There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your Being, not just in the head. Every cell is alive in that presence in which you don't need to think. Yet, in that state, if thought is required for some practical purpose, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operated beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itself through it.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Thinking, Intelligence, Feeling

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Thinking

“Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

Light, Wisdom

“Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.”

Alan Cohen

Light

“All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

“Great are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”

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

World

“If there's a hell, I think it's an encyclopedia, and you can just look up what everyone in your life thought about you. And if there is a heaven, it's a wikipedia, and you can just change that.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

Hell, Thinking, Change, Life

“The issue of a battle is the result of an instant, of a thought. There is the advance, with its various combinations, the battle is joined, the struggle goes on a certain time, the decisive moment presents itself, a spark of genius discloses it, and the smallest body of reserves accomplish victory.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Time, Victory, Decision

“If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1850s, Autobiographical Sketch Written for Jesse W. Fell (1859)

Personality

“The world is narrow, broad the mind—
Thoughts dwell easily side by side
Things collide violently in space”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act II, sc. ii
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

World

“Though Divine knowledge transcends all thoughts and symbols, yet the mystic's sincere meditation discovers the Ultimare Truth.”

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Hasan al-Niffari

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 81

Knowledge, Truth, Sincerity

“In the Bible, it says that God created the world and saw that it was good. That is what you see when you look from stillness without thought.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 1

God, World

“The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 3 The Egoic Self

Food, Sense

“Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 1

Nature, World

“Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying "I know this," we ought to say "I more or less know something more or less like this."”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

It is true that this proviso is hardly necessary as regards the multiplication table, but knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic. Suppose I say "democracy is a good thing": I must admit, first, that I am less sure of this than I am that two and two are four, and secondly, that "democracy" is a somewhat vague term which I cannot define precisely. We ought to say, therefore: "I am fairly certain that it is a good thing if a government has something of the characteristics that are common to the British and American Constitutions," or something of this sort. And one of the aims of education ought to be to make such a statement more effective from a platform than the usual type of political slogan.
1940s, Philosophy for Laymen (1946)

Knowledge

“It is always thought that he gave more than what he received, but to give something, you must have something inside.”

Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993) Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer

Source: Gervaso, Roberto. La mosca al naso, Rizzoli Editore (1980)

“For what was art, she thought, but the heart and soul made visible.”

Jane Yolen (1939) American speculative fiction and children's writer

Source: Short fiction, Dragonfield and Other Stories (1985), The Pot Child (p. 110)

Soul, Heart, Art

“Whenever you are able, have a “look” inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment–where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing–and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is?”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 6 Acceptance and Surrender

Pain, Feeling

“Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict arise when humans forget who they are. Yet how easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home: I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 4

Home, Truth, Anger, Forgetting

“The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 2

Truth, Understanding, Feeling

“The human condition: Lost in thought Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past. In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 2 Beyond the Thinking Mind

Personality, People, Sense, Past

“Cognition plays an influential role in Winning at Life.

Think thoughts that will add to your Strength and Power

in

your

Life…

NOT ones that drain your Stability and Strength.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Thinking, Life

“So many people are most miserable these days.
The reason they find it so difficult to be happy is that they always view the past to be better than it was, the present dramatically worse than it is, and the future less resolute than it will be.
The idea of happiness is foreign to them.
Is this not something that is innate because babies are born with
"tabula rasa" which refers to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. However I don't disagree with the doctrine of Innatism which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge.
A smile, for instance is natural and innate!
So it is a combination of the two schools of thought.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Baby, Idea, Nature, Knowledge

“When your priorities are straight;

Decisions are easy to make.

Sometimes it is very arduous to move on, but

You shall realize it was the Best Decision

you have ever made.

I left a very secure position

to take a new and intimidating

position in The Big City.

I became even bigger and better

than I even thought!

Take a chance…

or else you shall regret it the rest of your

life.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Chance, Decision, Life

“Of course I thought that in order to be happy I needed to be straight. I reached a point where I thought, Fuck this, I'd much prefer to hold my boyfriend's hand in public or be able to put my own face picture on Tinder and not be so concerned about that than getting a part.”

Jonathan Bailey (1988) British actor

"Jonathan Bailey: Jonathan Bailey Is Giving Us the Vapors" in GQ https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-jonathan-bailey (9 March 2022)

Happiness, Parting

“Whoever thought owning the libs would be cheap never tried to acquire a social media company!”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

2022

“He was dispos'd to mirth; but on the sudden
A Roman thought hath struck him.”

Cleopatra VII (-69–-30 BC) last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt

As quoted, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act I, (1623)

“My thoughts go immediately to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city of Mary, barbarously bombarded and destroyed.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"Pope: Mariupol 'barbarously bombarded' https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-705634, implicitly criticizing Russia", The Jerusalem Post, 2 May 2022 <br class="br">2020s, 2022

“At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don't. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.”

Tina Turner (1939) singer, dancer, actress, and author

Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good (2020), p. 126

Feeling, Thinking

“Even the best thought is not as good as the moment you detach from it. Even the most important content isn't as important as the moment you learn you can do without it. Like a good teacher.”

Joshua Leavitt

Learning, Teachers

“It is thought that justice is equality, and so it is, though not for everybody but only for those who are equals; and it is thought that inequality is just, for so indeed it is, though not for everybody, but for those who are unequal.”

Aristotle book Politics

Source: Politics, III. V. 8., https://www.loebclassics.com/view/aristotle-politics/1932/pb_LCL264.211.xml

Justice

“Every thought you hold onto is a prayer. If you have any fleeting negative idea at all, don’t give it a second thought.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Idea

“To find beauty in everyone you must see beauty in everyone, then announce that you see it, for in announcing it, you place it there in their reality. Make it your life's mission today to bring to the attention of another just how extraordinary they are. Say it. Say it. SAY it. Their heart is waiting to know that their own best thought about themselves can be believed.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Waiting, Beauty, Heart, Reality

“After you have gotten the mind, allowed the mind, to remove its focus from your story—tell it to refocus on what you—Big You—now choose to be. Once you get free of your story and your data, once you get to the space of no-thought, you then choose a state of being.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

“In using God’s Energy, the word “I” is the ignition key of creation. What follows the word “I” turns the key and starts the engine of manifestation.
Thus, when it “looks as if” Personal Creation is not working it is only because the Primal Energy has brought you what you inadvertently selected rather than what you thought you chose.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Personality

“Always find the strength to dominate your thoughts.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Trova sempre la forza di dominare i tuoi pensieri.
Source: prevale.net

“She couldn't have found anything nastier to say if she had thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

“she tapped her finger and nothing happened and she thought she had lost her magic, but it had only changed and it took her awhile to figure it out.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Change

“He pushed that thoughts away. He didn't like painful memories. Keep moving -- that was his motto. Don't dwell in things. Don't stay in one place too long. It was the only way to stay ahead of the sadness.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Pain, Sadness, Way, Memory

“I love you," he said, his voice catching. "When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Love

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Page 15

Life

“I would never betray Venda.”
“Sometimes we’re all pushed to do things we thought we could never do.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

“Do you have a lot of other profound thoughts like that? Blood is blood? A toaster is a toaster? A Gelatinous Cube is a Gelatinous Cube?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books

“I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Feeling, Happiness

“Keep climbing,' he told himself.
'Cheeseburgers,' his stomach replied.
'Shut up,' he thought.
'With fries,' his stomach complained.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“You had this all planned, didn’t you?' I accused. 'Thought you could come in here and seduce me like you do everyone else?' It wasn’t as if I could be angry, lying atop him as I was, but I tried.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Every Which Way But Dead

Lying

“Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Dreams, Housing, Madness

“I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Fear and Trembling

Source: Fear and Trembling

Love, God, Lovers

“When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Beauty, Evil

“Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.”

Margaret Edson Wit

Source: Wit

Time

“And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, the thought.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“V had a passing thought that she used the word "anyway" like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she'd just shared to make room for more.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.”

Thomas Bernhard book Correction

Source: Correction

“A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

My Lost Youth, refrain (1858), quoting Olaus Sirma
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Youth, Boy

“I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

Secret, Dreams, Soul, Imagination

“When people went on vacation, they shed their home skins, thought they could be a new person.”

Aimee Friedman (1979) American writer

Source: Sea Change

People, Home, Personality

“I thought we were celebrating being richer and cleverer than everyone else!”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Variant: To us — richer and cleverer than everyone else!
Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.”

Lawrence Block (1938) American writer

“I can only form one clear thought.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“I've always thought there are two ways of getting what you wanted in life. Forcing people to give it to you, or making them want to give it to you.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Life, People, Way

“… As could the sarcasm in her voice. "yes, she's bleeding to deat Lu upstairs, but i thought I'd avoid telling you right away, because I like to draw the suspense out.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Variant: Yes, she's bleeding to death upstairs, but I thought I'd avoid telling you right away, because I like to draw the suspense out.
Source: City of Fallen Angels

Drawing