quotations about thought
Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death.
C. J. CHERRYH
Chanur's Legacy
People can live very simple lives, can't they? Tucked away, without thinking. I think the world is what you enter when you think--when you become educated, when you question--because you can be in the big world and be utterly provincial.
V. S. NAIPAUL
The Paris Review, fall 1998
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal the poverty that necessitates the loan.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Thought and action should be one.
GEBHARD LEBRECHT VON BLUCHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Cloth of Gold
Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For an Autograph
Every wheatfield of human thought after a while becomes filled with cockle; then the husbandmen destroy the grain with the cockle and plant anew.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Call one thought, and another will follow.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
LEV S. VYGOTSKY
Thought and Language
For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet, towards men, are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place, as the vantage, and commanding ground.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Great Place", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
Two heads are better than one.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
Good thoughts are apt to vanish away if they be not speedily embodied in good actions.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies. Ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
JOHN KEATS
letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902