quotations about thought
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
Epistle to William Hogarth
Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
He trudg'd along, unknowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Every thought and feeling is a painting stroke, in the darkness, of our likeness that is to be; and our whole life is but a chamber, which we are frescoing with colors that do not appear while being laid on wet, but which will shine forth afterwards, when finished and dry.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
A thought is harmless unless we believe it.
BYRON KATIE
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.
ROALD DAHL
The Twits
Thoughts ... have tarried in my mind and peopled its inner chambers,
The sober children of reason, or desultory train of fancy.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sublime thoughts will give us their light and power.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
DORIS LESSING
The Times, November 23, 2003
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For an Autograph
If I supply you a thought you may remember it and you may not. But if I can make you think a thought for yourself, I have indeed added to your stature.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
Thought is power -- real, objective power. Moreover, the thoughts we create have a life of their own. They have a kind of material reality that affects other people for good or ill -- hence our responsibility to chose.
ANNIE BESANT
The Power of Thought
My thoughts were like mercury--always shifting away before I could grab them or form them into a cohesive shape.
DAN SIMMONS
Endymion
All you really have to contribute is what you think.
BARRY DILLER
Playboy, July 1989
Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
My thoughts and I were of another world.
BEN JONSON
Every Man Out of His Humour
The wish is often father to the thought.
JOHN SAUL
Black Lightning