quotations about the mind
A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
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
The mind grows by what it feeds on.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
The mind delights most in being led through a mystic maze before reaching the open door.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
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
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
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"
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
To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
The will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind,
Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
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
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 heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha