Quotes about thought
page 19

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

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

“I'm giving serious thought into eating yor wife” - Hannibal Lecter”

Thomas Harris (1940) American author and screenwriter

“Percy: I thought I’d lost my mom forever, and I was stuck on a hill in a thunderstorm fighting this huge bull dude while Grover was passed out wailing. “Food!” It was terrifying, man.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

Food, Moms, Fight

“The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: More Poems

Lovers, Light

“It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

Despair

“A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Imagination

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“My mind struggled to formulate a coherent though, any thought. I opened my mouth. "Your pajamas have Eeyore on them."

"I like Eeyore. He's sensible. A sober outlook on life never hurt anyone.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Gunmetal Magic

Life, Hurt

“One wondering thought pollutes the day”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Truth, Learning

“Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey

World, Star, Thinking, Waiting

“She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.”

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

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Lie, Sleep

“I watched the way our fingers intertwined, and I thought, What are hands made for but this? For holding. For holding on.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: First Love

Way

“She thought she was only seeing him because she wanted to see him… It's a by-product of very dramatic kissing.”

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

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Kiss

“Um," Grover said. "Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"I thought you'd want to know."
"Yeah?"
"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that… well… he's hungry.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“Alongside the practical thought something else struggled and, like an escaped butterfly, took wing: the assurance of something wonderful awaiting her. Just around the corner……”

Norah Lofts (1904–1983) British writer

“She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.”

Susan Minot (1956) American author and screenwriter

Source: Evening

People, Change, Personality

“Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Lying, Housing

“What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25

Hunger, Books, World, Understanding

“Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

World, Silence, Waiting

“… the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

World, Tree

“That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

World, Way

“Perfectionism is a shield that we carry with a thought process that says this, 'If I look perfect, live perfect, work perfect, and do it all perfectly, I can avoid or minimize feeling shame, blame, and judgement.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Feeling, Perfection

“I thought I could make out Jamie's Highland screech, but that was likely imagination; they all sounded equally demented.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Source: An Echo in the Bone

Imagination

“acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
"Six by nine. Forty two."
"That's it. That's all there is."
"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Universe

“It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Smile, Thinking, Personality

“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

The Man in Bogota

Question

“Who would have ever thought I'd be afraid of a zombie, any kind of zombie? Nicely ironic that.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“It's about taking everything you thought was true and throwing it out the window. It's about embracing life's unpredictability, letting go of boundaries, and starting over”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Pretty Little Liars #4: Unbelievable

Life

“I’d thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language I had for it.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Women, Beauty

“… I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

Parent, Time

“I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

World

“Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Memory, Personality

“Lemme guess," Regin said. "You had your introductory spiel all planned, but rational thought deserted you when you saw me stroll in braless.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.”

Haruki Murakami book The Strange Library

Source: The Strange Library

World

“Maybe, thought Ben, we are all cabinets of wonders.”

Brian Selznick book Wonderstruck

Variant: Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.
Source: Wonderstruck

“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Thinking, Past

“I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Universe

“I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.”

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

Source: The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

Life

“How sweetly he came to her, she thought. Even with his bulk and power, he came to her… sweetly.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“Change your thoughts and you can change the world.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

As quoted in Back on Track : How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve (1997) by Deborah Norville, p. 201
Variant: Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Attitude, Success, Wise, Life

“Below a certain point, if you keep too quiet, people no longer see you as thoughtful or deep; they simply forget you.”

Douglas Coupland book Eleanor Rigby

Source: Eleanor Rigby

People, Forgetting

“In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Depressing, Dead

“Right,” I said. “So the baboon, the crocodile…any other pets I should know about?”
Amos thought for a moment. “Visible ones? No, I think that’s it.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Thinking

“The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

People, Help, Speed, Forgetting

“The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”

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

Idea

“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Funny

“The sidesaddle was designed to protect a maiden's virginity, while risking the maiden's neck. Rather much for rather little, I thought.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Beauty

Source: Beauty

“Nothing had been okay, not for a long time. And every moment that I thought I was getting close, like the one I’d had earlier, seemed to remind the universe that I didn’t deserve that, not yet.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Universe, Time

“Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced… that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“Blood hell, what happened to you?" - Dante
The dark wisard and I had a mild disagreement." -Viper
What sort of disagreement?" -Dante
I thought he should be dead and he disagreed." -Viper”

Alexandra Ivy (1961) American novelist

Source: When Darkness Comes

Hell, Dead

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Source: Hannibal

“Every thought of yours is a real thing – a force.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Variant: Every idea from your thoughts is the real thing it's strength
Source: The Secret

“A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Nature

“I wondered if he ever thought of me, and hated the pang I felt when I told myself he didn't.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Hate

“Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

“If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Way, Happiness

“… she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Sadness

“If you had hope, maybe you could find a way to make things change,. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Hope, Way, Change

“Time is a keyhole, he thought as he looked up at the stars. Yes, I think so. We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do - the wind that blows through the keyhole- is the breath of all the living universe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Feeling, Star, Thinking, Universe

“But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Water

“Forgive me…. I called you an idiot. I spoke too hastily. You are not. Had I given it more thought, I would have called you a scoundrel.”

Lloyd Alexander book Westmark

Source: Westmark

Forgiveness

“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

“Oh, I used to lie all the time as a kid." I didn't think of it as lying, though. I thought of it as playing make-believe. I told Kitty she was adopted and her real family was in a traveling circus. It's why she took up gymnastics.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Lie, Family, Travel, Lying

“The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren't.”

Cormac McCarthy The Sunset Limited

Source: The Sunset Limited

Love

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

People, Age, Memory

“(Jace) "Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Jace and Clary, pg. 220
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Lost Souls (2012)
Context: "Stay with me. We can see the whole world."
"I am with you. I'm not going anywhere."
"Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought.

“Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark