quotations about the mind
The wise may find in trifles light as atoms in the air, some useful lesson to enrich the mind.
JOHN GODFREY SAXE
"King Solomon and the Bees"
There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of Nature, all seems anarchy and returning chaos; yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the strife of Nature itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seem only to threaten despair and subversion.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Difference Engine
Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
The Phenomenology of Spirit
A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.
ROBERT REED
"Precious Mental", Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1, 2013
A mind that is afraid withers away; it cannot function properly.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Fear
Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: --
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
'Tis the mind must guide the hand.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Giant Energy & the Fairy Skill", Mother Stories
There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
HANS MARGOLIUS
attributed, A Toolbox for Humanity
What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
attributed, Zen and the Work of Wittgenstein
Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
YODA
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins.
SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES
letter to Thomas Raikes, May, 1835
How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!
JANE AUSTEN
Mansfield Park
The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
God didn't give us minds just so we could refuse to use them.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
In greatest minds' great thoughts earth's passed; betimes
Fatal, foreshape the future.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Universal Hymn
The mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
The mind is nothing less than a garden of inestimable value which man should strive to cultivate.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought