Thought Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was a fatal blow.

Charles Dickens

If you will thank me '' he replied let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them I believe I thought only of you.

If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.

He had not applauded, he had remained seated, but he had looked at her steadily. From the depths of eternity he had looked at her and Rosalind became immortal. If I could believe him, she thought, if only I could believe him!

Simone de Beauvoir

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value.

Thomas Jefferson

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term "unconditional surrender."The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech--in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Do you believe in the value of truth, my dear, or don't you? Of course I believe in the truth, said Rhoda, staring. Yes, you say that, but perhaps you haven't thought about it. The truth hurts sometimes – and destroys one's illusions. I'd rather have it all the same. said Rhoda. So would I. But I don't know that we're wise. Mrs. Oliver; Rhoda Dawes

Agatha Christie

Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."

Simone de Beauvoir

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.

Once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once it becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.

Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly.

William Shakespeare

The most intractable of our experiences is the experience of Time-the intuition of duration, combined with the thought of perpetual perishing.

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
'The bitterness of Life!'

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.

Søren Kierkegaard

There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime

Edgar Allan Poe

The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done —

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

[Miele] really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.

Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore more generally chosen.

Benjamin Franklin

The vanishing volatile froth of the present, which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine record of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson