Philosophy on mind

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

“Man is the measure of all things.”

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

“If a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them. (Bk I, Ch II)”

“Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.”

“What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.”

“Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.”

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”

“As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.”

“He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me' -- in those who do not harbor such thoughts hatred will cease.”

“To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.”

“If, Mahāmati, meat is not eaten by anybody for any reason, there will be no destroyer of life.”

“Listen well, listen well, and mull it over in your thoughts!”

“Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse.Whatever a mother, father or other kinsman might do for you, the well-directed mind can do for you even better.”

“Develop the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow the calmness, the absence of pride.”

“The European invasion of the East was a deed of violence on a great scale, and it has left us the duty — noblesse oblige — of understanding the mind of the East. This is perhaps more necessary than we realize at present.”

“I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.”

“The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.”

“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.”

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”

“The sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially... from education, and human conventions.”

“Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.”

“During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance.”

“My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large / Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, / And will not mind to hit their proper targe.”

“This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.”

“Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.”

“Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.”

“The mind intent upon resolving as well as compounding the concept of a composite demands and presumes boundaries in which it may acquiesce in the former as well as in the latter direction.”

“Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.”

“In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.”

“Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?”

“Ah! when will the yoke of Custom—Custom, the blind tyrant, of which all other tyrants make their slave—ah! when will that misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off?—when, when will Reason be seated on her throne?”

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”

“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

“There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.”

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.”

“Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it”

“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”

“Children have as much mind to shew that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.”

“How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?”

“The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.”

“I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.”

“My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression.”

“Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.”

“What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.”

“It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.”

“The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (3)”

“The thought is the significant proposition. (4)”

“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. (6.44)”

“What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?”

“Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.”

“An entire mythology is stored within our language.”

“People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.”

“This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.”

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

“Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.”

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”

“By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.”

“Think on this doctrine,—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.”

“You have a mind? —Yes. Well, why not use it? (Hays translation)”

“All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.”

“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”

“All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.”

“We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.”

“Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”

“As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition.”

“To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.”

“The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”

“You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”

“There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”

“Father in heaven, when the thought of thee awakens in our soul, let it not waken as an agitated bird which flutters confusedly about, but as a child waking from sleep with a celestial smile.”

“The thoughts are to the desires, as scouts and spies, to range abroad and find the way to the thing desired.”

“Let us work without reasoning, said Martin; it is the only way to make life endurable.”