THOUGHT QUOTES V

quotations about thought

Whether thoughts and ideas manifest in a material outcome depends on our transmission of them into perceived reality.

LY DE ANGELES

Tarot Theory and Practice


Words are but the shining garments of Thought.

EDWIN LEIBFREED

"The Song of the Soul"

Tags: Edwin Leibfreed


In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.

JOHN ORTBERG

God Is Closer Than You Think

Tags: John Ortberg


Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections

Tags: Walter Benjamin


The course of history has often been turned by sentiment, but by thought never. The thinkers are but valuable ornaments. A safe place is assigned to them on the world's mantelpiece, while humanity basks and blinks stupidly on the hearth.

MAX BEERBOHM

The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm

Tags: Max Beerbohm


People, in all but the most favored times and places, are rooted to the places where they were born, think the thoughts of those places, can endure no other thoughts. The next parish even is suspected.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal the poverty that necessitates the loan.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

Tags: Eliza Cook


Every thought is a seed which inevitably will bear fruit of its own kind.

WALTER MATTHEWS

Human Life from Many Angles


Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.

LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES

Reflections and Maxims


When thoughts cannot find vent and utterance in action, the mind ceases to think. It will not continue to produce its mighty births of power and beauty, to see them fall dead-born into the world, or to be strangled in embryo.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

For an Autograph


Cut off, or cut free, from speech, thought assumes its baroque writerly structures. Speech in a language of which he knows only a few words involves the conscious, patient, awkward, hilarious, and typically unsuccessful translation of thought. This process illuminates the gulf between thought and speech, which is not quite identical to the gulf between inside and outside.

MICHAEL W. CLUNE

"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017


Thought exists at the farthest remove from the vocalizations of the human animal.

MICHAEL W. CLUNE

"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017


Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Cloth of Gold

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested -- rulers, lawyers, clerics -- have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.

PETER KROPOTKIN

Anarchist Morality

Tags: Peter Kropotkin


A great thought is best dressed in the simplest language.

CHARLES NORDHOFF

attributed, Day's Collacon


Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Tags: Robert Green Ingersoll


Thought, stumbling, plods
Past fallen temples, vanished gods,
Altars unincensed, fanes undecked,
Eternal systems flown or wrecked;
Through trackless centuries that grant
To the poor trudge refreshment scant,
Age after age, pants on to find
A melting mirage of the mind.

ALFRED AUSTIN

"A Defence of English Spring", Lyrical Poems

Tags: Alfred Austin


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

MAHATMA GANDHI

attributed, Ethical Religion (Ganesan)

Tags: Mahatma Gandhi