quotations about the mind
Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
The mind grows by what it feeds on.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
Look in, and know the mind is all that is;
And knowing, feeling it is all,
Then have ye all.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"Our Wealth Is Within Us"
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Nor fire, nor rocks, can stop our furious minds,
Nor waves, nor winds.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
An ill principle in the mind is worse than the matter of a disease in the body.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
It would seem as if, when the mind was once set apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, other minds, it searched about through all the universe for causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Something must be found to justify its anguish to itself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Doctor Rush, September 23, 1800
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.
SRI AUROBINDO
Essays Divine and Human
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
speech, August 16, 1967
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
Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.
BHARTRHARI
"On Time the Destroyer"
The mind is the main instrument to gain enlightenment, but enlightenment is only reached when the mind stops. Q: How can we stop the mind? A: Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind.
BABA HARI DASS
Silence Speaks: from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass
The will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
The country would be far better if the population were half as interested in keeping their minds in as good condition as they tried to keep their bodies.
JOHN SAUL
Black Lightning
The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha