Mind Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Man's duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.

As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

The error of our eye directs our mind.
What error leads must err.

William Shakespeare

Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least.

And bear unmov'd the wrongs of base mankind,
The last, and hardest, conquest of the mind.

But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.

The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn's.

Charles Dickens

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

Charles Dickens

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

Michel de Montaigne

A multitude of words is no proof of a prudent mind.

The world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.

If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The political Liberty of a Citizen is the Peace of Mind arising from the Consciousness, that every Individual enjoys his peculiar Safety; and in order that the People might attain this Liberty, the Laws ought to be so framed, that no one Citizen should stand in Fear of another; but that all of them should stand in Fear of the same Laws....

Catherine the Great

A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.

Alexandre Dumas

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

Jean de La Bruyère

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

Bertrand Russell

When people warn me against doing something once my mind is made up, I grow increasingly determined to try it.

Richard Branson

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

Thomas Jefferson

The greatest weapons in the conquest of knowledge are an understanding mind and the inexorable curiosity that drives it on.

Of what is man certain? What lasts? What passes? What is chimerical? What is real?... Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.