quotations about thought
Thoughts shut up want air,
And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Old thoughts never die.
DR. MACKAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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
Last Essays
Force a hand ... and it will fight you. But convince a mind to think as you want it to think, and you have an ally.
DAN BROWN
Digital Fortress
Thoughts are things.
BRUCE LEE
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.
LEON BLUM
attributed, Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases
Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
"Notes on Hamlet"
Thoughts are blossoms of the mind.
JOHANN AUGUST HERMES
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Kavanagh", Prose Works
And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Cooper
Thought is twin sister of existence; they were born together, and will die together.
PARMENIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
lecture, November 18, 1862
It is ... no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Small House at Allington
The kings of modern thought are dumb.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
Thought once awakened does not again slumber.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Heroes and Hero Worship
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI, Part I
New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
The old excitement of thought has half died out, or rather it is diffused in quiet pleasure over a life instead of being concentrated in intense and eager spasms.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies