Quotes about thought
page 15

“I snuck a look to see how Eric was taking this, and he was staring at me the same way the Monroe vampires had. Thoughtful. Hungry.
"That's interesting," he said. "I had a psychic once. It was incredible."
"Did the psychic think so?”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

Way, Thinking

“If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“And you don't care that I'm your brother," he said. "I know how you felt about Jace, even when you thought he was your brother. You can't lie to me."

"Jace is better than you."

"No one's better than me.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Lie

“We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.”

Michael Crichton Prey

Source: Prey

Thinking

“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Love, Betrayal, Forgetting

“What made you fall in love with a prostitute?”
“I didn’t understand it myself at the time. But I’ve thought about it since, and I think it was because, knowing that your body would never be mine alone, I had to concentrate on conquering your soul.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Soul, Understanding, Thinking

“The word Styx got her [Mrs. O'Leary, the hellhound] excited. She probably thought I meant sticks. She jumped a few times,, and then calmed down enough for me to push Nico onto her back.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Time

“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Understanding

“Your thoughts become things!”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

“The thread of will-they-or-won't-they was the real driver of every word and glance and shift of body.

So… this was a date, Blay thought. A subtextual negotiation slipcovered in talk of books read and music enjoyed.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Books, Music, Reading

“She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Beauty

“Dreams should make you think, ‘If I had the guts to do it and I didn’t care what anybody thought, this I what I’d really do’.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Time of My Life

Dreams, Thinking

“I thought my life would seem more interesting with a musical score and a laugh track.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Life, Music

“I secretly wondered if Dimitri's problem might be that he was jealous. He hadn't pulled Lissa aside to yell at her. The thought made me slightly happy, but then I remembered my earlier curiosity about why Dimitri had even wandered by.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Problem, Happiness

“Which meant his only assets were one whiny imprisoned goddess, one sort-of-girlfriend with a dagger, and Leo, who apparently thought he could defeat the armies of darkness with breath mints.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“His dad said even the cavemen had geniuses among them. Somebody had thought up the wheel.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Source: Gregor the Overlander

“You'll find another.'
God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

God, Girl, Waiting

“Quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times, a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”

Margaret Wise Brown (1910–1952) American children's writer and editor

Time, Parting

“… there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Behavior, Problem

“She heard music. Angels singing? she thought, dizzy. It seemed odd for angels to sing after table sex. She managed to swallow on a throat wildly dry. "Music," she murmured.

"My phone. In my pants. Don't care."

"Oh. Not angels."

"No. Def Leppard.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Search

Music, Sex, Angels, Singing

“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”

Corey Robin (1967) American academic

Source: The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

“He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Talented Mr. Ripley

Source: The Talented Mr. Ripley

People, Cars

“The undercurrent of my every thought:
To seek you, find you, have you for my own.”

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

Source: Collected Poems

“I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.
"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.
Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Dogs

“Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.”

Sonya Hartnett (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Ghost's Child

Way

“I always thought that 'Good things happen to those who do the wave' No wonder I've been so confused”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“She thought she kept seeing him because she wanted to see him," Macey explained.
"Ooooh," Bex and Liz sighed together.
"It's a by-product of very dramatic kissing," Macey went on like a doctor identifying a common side effect.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Kiss

“Love was worth sacrificing for, he thought as he left his room. Even if it wasn't yours.

-Phury's thoughts”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Variant: Love was worth sacrificing for, he thought as he left his room. Even if it wasn't yours.
Source: Lover Unbound

Love

“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.”

Euripidés The Phoenician Women

Variant: Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.
Source: The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 BC)

“Just because you're the enemy of my enemy don't mean you're my friend, Han thought.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Life, Dreams, Girl, Training

“It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.”

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

Evil

“Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.”

Hermann Broch (1886–1951) austrian writer

Parting, Sea

“Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 111-112
Source: Course in General Linguistics
Context: Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. here are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.

“All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly.
And I hate him for it.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (p. 232)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Hate

“quoting reminds me there are other people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts besides mine, and other ways of thinking.”

Gregory Maguire (1954) Novelist

Source: What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

People, World, Way, Quotes

“Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech”

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

Lovers, Thinking

“Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Intelligence, Nature

“O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)
Source: Letters of John Keats

Life

“I thought maybe he was seeing another tree. - Juniper”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Tree

“… the moron who thought love was forever.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love

“I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Past, Housing

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

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