Quotes about thought
page 29

“That's not the spirit of the law, Emma. Remember?"I thought it was 'the Law is annoying, but it is also flexible.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Law

“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

“I was filled with dread at the thought my mind had skipped town and left me behind to pay the rent." --Dexter”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Life

“She wrote, 'Dandelion, I love you.' And I thought that was magic. It's not in you, it's between you. It's bigger and stronger than you are”

Melvin Burgess (1954) British children's writer

Source: Smack

Love

“Demon hunting and fashion," Clary said. "I never would have thought they went together.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Fashion

“What I wished more than anything was that the thing hadn't happened at all, and I thought that by not mentioning it I'd be doing everyone else a favor.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

“Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Home, Thinking

“We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

Time

“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask… with nothing beneath it?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Life, World, Forgetting

“She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Love

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

World, Light

“At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Source: Blood Memory

Drink, Time, Dance

“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”

Tess Gerritsen book Body Double

Source: Body Double

Marriage

“Charles preferred his deer to taste like meat and his pancakes to look like pancakes. Brother Wolf thought he was too picky. Brother Wolf was probably right.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

Wolf

“It is our own thoughts that hold the key to miraculous transformation.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

“I briefly entertained the notion that I was insane and didn't know it. Then I considered the possibility that I had always been insane, acknowledged it as more likely than the former, then pushed both thoughts from my mind.”.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Adulthood

“Remember the pain?' thought Artemis. I hate myself. I really do.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

Pain, Hate

“I shudder at the thought of men….
I'm due to fall in love again”

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

Love, Men

“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Happiness, Sea

“And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Cry

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

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

“Thought is the thought of thought.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“Here in this moment we are beautiful, nocturnal creatures and our thoughts and words are jewels guarded by the moon.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Beauty

“I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Thinking, Tear

“How can thoughts hurt so much when they aren't even physical?”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager

Hurt

“Look at it this way," Ms. Terwilliger said, after several moments of thought. "The callistana thinks of you two as its parents.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Way, Thinking, Parent

“You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula

Love

“My dreams had to be His dreams, the ones He placed in my heart. They couldn't be the ones I thought I should have, or needed for the purpose of making other people like me.”

Stormie Omartian (1942) American writer

Source: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing

People, Dreams, Heart

“If he'd looked like a cross between Mr. Clooney and, say, one of the hobbits, I probably would have been far more capable of coherent thought.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

“Consciousness, unprovable by scientific standards, is forever, then, the impossible phantom in the predictable biologic machine, and your every thought a genuine supernatural event. Your every thought is a ghost, dancing.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Source: Promethea, Vol. 5

Dance

“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

World

“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Source: The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches

Life, Hell

“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

God

“If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Forgiveness, Personality

“You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“Because I want you to know that your're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And I thought I should introduce myself. I mean, we should get to know each other. Since you're the girl I intend to marry.
~Mark Gianni”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: As Long as We Both Shall Live

Beauty, Girl

“So much magic, Clary thought, and nothing to mend a broken heart”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Heart

“He understands why people hold hands: he’d always thought it was about possessiveness, saying. But it’s about maintaining contact. It is about speaking without words. It is aboutand.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People, Understanding

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Flying, Forgetting

“Æschylus: High thoughts must have high language.”

Aristophanés The Frogs

rewritten and embellished tr. Fitts 1955, p. 108 http://books.google.com/books?id=CdZxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22High+thoughts+must+have+high+language%22 Frogs (405 BC) Source: Frogs and Other Plays

“He thought of his remembrance of Jordan, thought of how it hurt to even look at Isabelle and Clary. Without memory, they were lost. And nobody wanted someone they loved to be lost.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Love, Memory, Hurt

“do you ever have dirty thoughts about spongebob?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“I hate the thought that I'm just some kind of Russian nesting doll with the big outside and inevitably, rattling around under all the layers, a crude little peg with a face is the truth of me.”

Wendy McClure (1971) American writer

Source: I'm Not the New Me

Hate, Truth

“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thoughts alone suffice them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Personality, Perfection

“Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life

“Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Heart

“When a decision like that is made by a government, it emboldens those who are already prejudiced to speak their deepest thoughts of hate. They assume they are simply brave enough to say what everyone really thinks.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Hate, Thinking, Decision

“He taught me there's a place on a man's back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once,' Sebastian had said. 'I guess we got the same birthday present that year, big brother,' Jace thought. 'Didn't we?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Birthday, Heart

“Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source - you.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Thinking, Universe

“They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Love, Hate

“There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.”

Murray Bookchin book Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Source: Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Nature

“I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I'm so grateful that he's here, not dead by the stream as I'd thought. So glad I don't have to face Cato alone.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Kiss, Sleep, Dead

“The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

School

“The future's a weirder place than we thought it would be when we were little kids.”

Cory Doctorow book For the Win

Source: For the Win

Future

“She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing it for the first time - the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Way, Time

“I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Imagination

“I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: The Sign of Jonas

Question

“How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence'; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

Source: Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta

Fools, Soul

“I envied it; not the idea of having so much money that you could throw it away, but the thought of growing up in a world where someone cared so much about your happiness and so little about what you accomplished in life.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Life, Money, Happiness, World

“The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (1935).

Truth, Fear, Knowledge

“In those three years, (from fourteen to seventeen years old)… I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animais. I remember that a companion of those days,' of whom I hâve since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I hâve since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 2-3

Life, Secret, School, Beauty

“Where'er a noble deed is wrought,
Where'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts in glad surprise
To higher levels rise.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Santa Filomena

Santa Filomena.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“[From Ianthe]
I am a miser
Of all thy thoughts and words, and looks and feelings—
Oh, I am jealous of a leaf, a flower,
A song, a star, if much thought on by thee!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Feeling, Star, Flowers

“Look at what Bush has done. The economy took an incredible hit after September 11. That was a huge shock to the economy. And we've recovered a lot quicker than we thought, thanks to Bush and his economic policy.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Donahue
2002-11-22
TV appearances

“A million and a half of people spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but it was a new thing in the world. …which had in fact been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.—that within three-quarters of a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six and a half millions. …With these facts in mind, one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that unless it was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be, equally able not to pay them.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People, World, Past, Country

“I grew up in a family where no one was in the entertainment business. So stand-up and acting were seen as something unrealistic. I always thought it was just people in L. A. and New York that became actors or comedians.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Ed Will (April 28, 2006) "Your face sure is familiar. ...", The Denver Post, p. FF-09.

People, Family, Business

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

Life, People, Way, Travel

“In a globalized world, security can no longer be thought of as a zero-sum game involving states alone. Global security, instead, has five dimensions that include human, environmental, national, transnational, and transcultural security, and, therefore, global security and the security of any state or culture cannot be achieved without good governance at all levels that guarantees security through justice for all individuals, states, and cultures.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

The Five Dimensions of Global Security: Proposal for a Multi-sum Security Principle, p. 15-16 (2007)

World, Justice, Game

“To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 10 Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

Men, Pain, Fate, Happiness

“The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Engineering Souls http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_sndgs03.html (March 22, 2007). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Men, World, Soul, Change

“My parents kept things real. I had no idea they were famous. In fact, it didn’t hit me until one day when I was riding in the car with my father in Ann Arbor, Michigan—I was maybe 8 and could barely see above the dashboard—and we stopped at a crosswalk. Suddenly we were surrounded by people who recognized my dad and were really thrilled to see him. I remember looking at this man I thought I knew so well and thinking, “Who are you?””

Mark Harmon (1951) actor from the United States

TV Insider interview (2017)

People, Cars, Idea, Thinking

“First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

As quoted in The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (1991) by Douglas Kinnard, p. 198

War, Business, Country

“Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

God, Faith

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

“Here we go again,’ he thought. ‘Drink and reminiscence. Another day of wasted time. They’re right when they say we drink too much out here. And we slobber too much over ourselves…. We’re all sorry for ourselves because we’re not big executives or artists or happily married men in a civilized temperate climate.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Men, Drink, Time

“"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 33. The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God, Way, Freedom

“Flaubert and Nietzsche have emphasized the importance of standing up and walking in the process of thinking. The peripatetics were perhaps motivated by the same awareness. Yet purposeful walking — what we call marching — is an enemy of thought and is used as a powerful instrument for the suppression of independent thought and the inculcation of unquestioned obedience.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1960)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Motivation, Thinking

“Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. III (1834)

Men

“There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas… I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon. The only thing I've come up with recently is advertising.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

Bedazzled (1967)

Idea, Time

“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

“This guy, he just taught me chords and stuff. And after a year, I thought, I can't be bothered having lessons. So I just decided to figure out my own stuff. I never wanted to play all those fast solos. I just thought, I'll be like Pete Townshend of The Who. I'll do what he does and play powerful chords and stuff.”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

On how he learnt Guitar, Guitar School magazine, "Rock n' Roll high school" February 1996.
Interviews

Guy

“In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious. … The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person's skin had burned off.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 1: Bloodlines

Age, Sense, Time, Personality

“there is always
a comforting thought
in time of trouble when
it is not our trouble”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

comforting thoughts
archy does his part (1935)

Time

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Books, Search

“It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 64

Feeling, Sense

“At this point bourgeois thought must come up against an insuperable obstacle, for its starting-point and its goal are always, if not always consciously, an apologia for the existing order.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 48

“What is life difficult and cumbersome, and what hard work it is to fathom one's own thoughts, feelings really truthfully - to purify and to place them behind each other. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Marie Bilders-van Bosse (1837–1900) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch (citaat uit een brief van Maria Bilders-van Bosse, in het Nederlands:) Wat is het leven moeilijk en omslachtig, en wat heeft men een toer om zijne eigen gedachten, gevoelens regt naar waarheid te doorgronden – te zuiveren en achter elkaar te plaatsen.
Quote from her letter to sister Anna, The Hague, 12 Jan. 1879; as cited in Marie Bilders-van Bosse 1837-1900 – Een Leven voor Kunst en Vriendschap, Ingelies Vermeulen & Ton Pelkmans; Kontrast ( ISBN 978-90-78215-54-7), 2008, p. 21

Life, Feeling

“She thought that most women make a great mistake in allowing dress to be the master instead of the servant of their good looks; many women were, she considered, entirely crushed and made insignificant by the beauty of their clothes.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Tenterhooks (1912), Chapter x.

Women, Beauty, Clothes

“Somewhere along the line, he thought, these things have become your heritage. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them, without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them, by renouncing the place that they have given you.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

“Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
…
It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion.”

Robert Grudin (1938) American writer

Time and the Art of Living (1982)

God, Feeling, Knowledge, Science

“There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off.”

James Herriot (1916–1995) veterinary surgeon and writer

Love, Help, Animals

“"I'm not worried," I said. And I wasn't, because I thought things would be fine. And even though I was wrong, it is still not so bad a way to set your mind toward the unknown just when you are coming into the face of it.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 17

Way

“It awes by the majesty of its truths, it agitates by the force of its compunctions, it penetrates the heart by the tenderness of its appeals, and it casts over the abyss of thought, the shadow of its eternal grandeur.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 140.

Truth, Heart

“The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even hostile tongue; for, if it does not sound too vain, I might express the opinion that each one of the individual and disconnected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a consequence from the thought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in the Upanishads, is by no means the case.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition Kants Philosophie also ist die einzige, mit welcher eine gründliche Bekanntschaft bei dem hier Vorzutragenden gradezu vorausgesetzt wird. — Wenn aber überdies noch der Leser in der Schule des göttlichen Platon geweilt hat; so wird er um so besser vorbereitet und empfänglicher seyn mich zu hören. Ist er aber gar noch der Wohllhat der Veda's theilhaft geworden, deren uns durch die Upanischaden eröfneter Zugang, in meinen Augen, der größte Vorzug ist, den dieses noch junge Jahrhundert vor den früheren aufzuweisen hat, indem ich vermuthe, daß der Einfluß der Samskrit-Litteratur nicht weniger tief eingreifen wird, als im 14ten Jahrhundert die Wiederbelebung der Griechischen: hat also, sage ich, der Leser auch schon die Weihe uralter Indischer Weisheit empfangen und empfänglich aufgenommen; dann ist er auf das allerbeste bereitet zu hören, was ich ihm vorzutragen habe. Ihn wird es dann nicht, wie manchen Andern fremd, ja feindlich ansprechen; da ich, wenn es nicht zu stolz klänge, behaupten möchte, daß jeder von den einzelnen und abgerissenen Aussprüchen, welche die Upanischaden ausmachen, sich als Folgesatz aus dem von mir mitzutheilenden Gedanken ableiten ließe, obgleich keineswegs auch umgekehrt dieser schon dort zu finden ist. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. pp.XII-XIII books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR12 The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Wisdom, Hostility, School, Literature

Quotes about thought page 29

Quotes about thought
page 29