Quotations about the Mind

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind. ~Eric Hoffer


The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. ~Sigmund Freud


All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half-used minds. ~George Bernard Shaw


If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


The mind is the most capricious of insects - flitting, fluttering. ~Virginia Woolf


No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind. ~Arnold Bennett


It's hard to make up your bed while you're still sleeping in it. Hard to make up your mind for the same reason. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Impressions arriving at the brain make it enter into activity, just as food falling into the stomach excites it to more abundant secretion of gastric juice. ~Pierre Cabanis, translated from French


That's the classical mind at work, runs fine inside but looks dingy on the surface. ~Robert T. Pirsig


The mind is like a trunk: if well-packed, it holds almost every thing; if ill-packed, next to nothing. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment. ~Iara Gassen


A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters. ~Cicero


The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind. ~Katherine Mansfield


Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


[W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use. ~Samuel Johnson


Perhaps God gives us a physical body so that every time we change our mind, we won't be someone else. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside....
The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound.
~Emily Dickinson


Few minds are sunlike, sources of light in themselves and to others: many more are moons that shine with a borrowed radiance. One may easily distinguish the two: the former are always full; the latter only now and then, when their suns are shining full upon them. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Pain of mind is worse than pain of body. ~Latin Proverb


Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Creative minds are rarely tidy. ~John William Gardner, "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society," 1964


According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else... ~J.K. Rowling, "The Second War Begins," Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003


Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the market place. ~Euripides


Sometimes it's harder to attain inner silence than outer silence. The dog stopped barking and the kids have gone to bed, but your mind has a lot to talk about and it knows you can't pretend you're not at home. ~Linda Solegato


The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Pour some water into a tub and stir it up. Now try as hard as you can to calm the water with your hands; you will succeed in agitating it further. Let it stand undisturbed a while, and it will calm down by itself. The human brain works much the same way. ~Koichi Tohei, Ki in Daily Life


Ever wonder what crime you committed that you are confined to a small enclosure above your sinuses, under permanent skull arrest? ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Choke


To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. ~Chuang Tzŭ


Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. ~Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, 1820


Sometimes I suffer from indigestion of the mind. ~Carrie Latet


Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. ~Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge


I've concluded, after many years, that my mind works by process of elimination. Problem is, it hasn't eliminated anything yet. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it. ~Mark Twain


It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion. ~Horace