quotations about the mind
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind,
Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
In activities other than purely logical thought, our minds function much faster than any computer yet devised.
DANIEL CREVIER
AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence
Without the mind, sensuality quite has no organs to call her own!
J. D. SALINGER
"Hapworth 16, 1924"
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
A Man has always the voice of his mind.
PIERRE-ANTOINE BERRYER
attributed, Words of Human Wisdom
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
The mind, when compelled, by education or other circumstances, to receive irrational doctrines, has yet a power of keeping them, as it were, on its surface, of excluding them from its depths, of refusing to incorporate them with its own being; and when burdened with a mixed and incongruous system, it often discovers a sagacity which reminds us of the instinct of inferior animals, in selecting the healthful and nutritious portions, and in making them its daily food.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The mind is free, whate'er afflict the man,
A King's a King, do Fortune what she can.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
The Barrons' Wars
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
In the world of mind, as in that of matter, we always occupy a position. He who is continually changing his point of view will see more, and that too more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
You can, when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Average Jones
He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
The Haunted Bookshop
The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations