|
|
|
- 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"
It's the thought that counts.
Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
- The delicate thought that cannot find expression,
- For ruder speech too fair,
- That, like thy petals, trembles in possession,
- And scatters on the air.
BRET HARTE, "The Mountain Heart's Ease"
All you really have to contribute is what you think.
BARRY DILLER, Playboy, Jul. 1989
The most dangerous thief is unwholesome thought.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, The Gospel of Buddha
My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living.
ANAIS NIN, diary, Feb. 1932
Great thoughts come from the heart.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
There are little thoughts in your head that can grow until they eat your entire mind. Just tiny little thoughts--they are like a cancer, there is no telling what triggers the spread, or who will be struck, and why some get it and others are spared.
ANNE ENRIGHT, The Gathering
O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
JOHN KEATS, letter to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
Man being made a reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being, than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
My thoughts were like mercury--always shifting away before I could grab them or form them inot a cohesive shape.
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
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
- Ah, the mighty men who conquer,
- And the men whose words we drink,
- Are the men who quit the jangle,
- Quit the turmoil and the wrangle
- Of the world, and turn their faces
- To secluded, silent places,
- Where in solitude they think.
Each flying thought, a flying thought pursues.
C. B. LANGSTON, "Thought"
- I hold it true that thoughts are things
- Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings,
- And that we send them forth to fill
- The world with good results--or ill.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Secret Thoughts"
To think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby Dick
Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMAN, Einstein's Dreams
Never know whose thoughts you're chewing.
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
JOHN GALSWORTHY, Maid in Waiting
Force a hand ... and it will fight you. But convince a mind to think as you want it to think, and you have an ally.
DAN BROWN, Digital Fortress
Back to Thought Quotes
|
|
|
