quotations about thought
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Pebble in the Sky
New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
The delicate thought that cannot find expression,
For ruder speech too fair,
That, like thy petals, trembles in possession,
And scatters on the air.
BRET HARTE
"The Mountain Heart's Ease"
They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
PHILIP SIDNEY
Arcadia
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal the poverty that necessitates the loan.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
I don't believe in thought. Too much thinking.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
Every thought is a seed which inevitably will bear fruit of its own kind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, August 1, 1786
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Cloth of Gold
Thought exists at the farthest remove from the vocalizations of the human animal.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
Two heads are better than one.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.
THOMAS BERNHARD
Extinction
Thought is not made in a vacuum, nor created out of likeness. It requires travel and shipping and the coming and going of strangers to impregnate a civilization. That is why thought has flourished in cities which lie along the paths of communication. Nineveh, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, the Hansa towns, London, Paris -- they have made ideas out of the movement and contact of many people. Men are jostled into thought. Left alone they spin the same thread from the same dream. A community which is self-contained and homogeneous and secluded is intellectually deaf, dumb, and blind. It can cultivate robust virtue and simple dogmatism, but it will not invent or throw out a profusion of ideas.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
Words are but the shining garments of Thought.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Great thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth lose half their preciousness, and ever must, unless the diamond with its own rich dust be cut and polished, it seems little worth.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"On Reading---"
What exile from himself can flee?
To zones, though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where'er I be,
The blight of life--the demon Thought.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
A man has a right to think lots of things he has no right to say.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
People, in all but the most favored times and places, are rooted to the places where they were born, think the thoughts of those places, can endure no other thoughts. The next parish even is suspected.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Maid in Waiting