quotations about the mind
The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is resisted.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
It would seem as if, when the mind was once set apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, other minds, it searched about through all the universe for causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Something must be found to justify its anguish to itself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.
SRI AUROBINDO
Essays Divine and Human
The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.
SIGMUND FREUD
Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.
BHARTRHARI
"On Time the Destroyer"
To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don't see until
It's all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Houseboat Days"
Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture V, "Pragmatism and Common Sense", Pragmatism
The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke