quotations about the mind
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
I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
Few minds wear out; more rust out.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia
My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
MARK TWAIN
letter to James Redpath, August 8, 1871
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The greatest business of a man is to improve his mind.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
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
Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
JOHN ADAMS
attributed, Looking Toward Sunset: From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected
There are some metaphysical and abstract arguments for the opinion that the mind, the I within, that controls the body, what the Germans call the ego--which is Latin for I--is simple, not complex; that is, one power operating in different ways and doing different things. I am myself inclined to think that the better opinion; but it is not necessary here to go into this question at all, for what we are going to study is not the mind itself, but human nature, that is, the operations of the mind. And there is no doubt that the operations of the mind are complex. There may be, I am inclined to think there is, but one power, which perceives and thinks and feels and wills; but perceiving and thinking and feeling and willing are very different actions, and it is only with the actions that we have to do.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The Evolution of Physics
It is the mind that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
EDMUND SPENSER
The Faerie Queene
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