quotations about the mind
Take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
BOB DYLAN
"Mr. Tambourine Man"
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Of a Certain Condescension in Foreigners
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"
There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don't see until
It's all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Houseboat Days"
When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.
JOHN LENNON
"Julia", The White Album
The mind is not only the hardest, but often the last part of the human anatomy that one can tell to keep quiet.
WICK FISHER
"Wick's World", Moose Lake Star Gazette, December 14, 2017
For the retiring of the mind within itself is the state which is most susceptible of divine influxions; save that it is accompanied in this case with a fervency and elevation (which the ancients noted by fury), and not with a repose and quiet, as it is in the other.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
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
I weight my mind as best I can to keep it close to earth
With chunky little platitudes and bits of twisted mirth;
For dust will gather in the house, and shirts unmended lie
Unless you learn to keep your mind from gadding in the sky.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"I Weight My Mind", Burning Bush
The speed of the human mind is remarkable. So is its inability to face the obvious.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
The mind grows by what it feeds on.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
MARK TWAIN
The Innocents Abroad
The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.
SIGMUND FREUD
Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The mind delights most in being led through a mystic maze before reaching the open door.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is resisted.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
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
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The Apple Cart