Thought Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The intellect is a cold thing and a merely intellectual idea will never stimulate thought in the same manner that a spiritual idea does.

As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

William Shenstone

This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.

Isaac Mayer Wise

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.

Stanisław Jerzy Lec

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.

George Berkeley

There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind.

Sarah Josepha Hale

But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

William Ellery Channing

Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produces great deeds and thoughts.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.

Fulton J. Sheen

And Tempus thought then that nothing was more worthwhile than what was growing in this whitewashed barracks, where he has come to build a force such as men or gods have never seen - a force worth reckoning with, if you were of a mind. And something was of that mind. And something else opposed it. He should have expected that. Battle in the heavens, battle on the earth.

Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.

So many people, you know, hit the White House with their dictaphone running. I never even kept a journal. I thought, 'I want to live my life, not record it.'

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Daphne du Maurier

But the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider... That thought was our power.

Joshua Chamberlain

Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.

Edward Carpenter

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Martin Heidegger

I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.

Frédéric Chopin

Try to make at least one person happy every day. If you cannot do a kind deed, speak a kind word. If you cannot speak a kind word, think a kind thought. Count up, if you can, the treasure of happiness that you would dispense in a week, in a year, in a lifetime!

Lawrence Lovasik

Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.