quotations about the mind
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"
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
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
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
This mind of ours, like the earth beneath our feet, teems with exhaustless riches. The conditions of development only are needed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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 will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
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
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
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
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
Nor fire, nor rocks, can stop our furious minds,
Nor waves, nor winds.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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
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
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