quotations about the mind
The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is resisted.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
The mind delights most in being led through a mystic maze before reaching the open door.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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
An ill principle in the mind is worse than the matter of a disease in the body.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
Look in, and know the mind is all that is;
And knowing, feeling it is all,
Then have ye all.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"Our Wealth Is Within Us"
The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in while the parlor remains clean.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nor fire, nor rocks, can stop our furious minds,
Nor waves, nor winds.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
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 will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.
ROBERT REED
"Precious Mental", Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1, 2013
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"
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The mind is the main instrument to gain enlightenment, but enlightenment is only reached when the mind stops. Q: How can we stop the mind? A: Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind.
BABA HARI DASS
Silence Speaks: from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.
OZZY OSBOURNE
attributed, Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken
The country would be far better if the population were half as interested in keeping their minds in as good condition as they tried to keep their bodies.
JOHN SAUL
Black Lightning
You can, when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Average Jones
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
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