quotations about thought
Thought as such ... is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Negative Dialectics
I am full of thoughts,
A thousand wheels toss my uncertain fears,
There is a storm in my hot boiling brains,
Which rises without wind. A horrid one.
THOMAS DEKKER
The Noble Spanish Soldier
Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
I don't believe in thought. Too much thinking.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
When thoughts cannot find vent and utterance in action, the mind ceases to think. It will not continue to produce its mighty births of power and beauty, to see them fall dead-born into the world, or to be strangled in embryo.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Ah, the mighty men who conquer,
And the men whose words we drink,
Are the men who quit the jangle,
Quit the turmoil and the wrangle
Of the world, and turn their faces
To secluded, silent places,
Where in solitude they think.
EDGAR GUEST
"Think"
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Cloth of Gold
A great thought is best dressed in the simplest language.
CHARLES NORDHOFF
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thought and action should be one.
GEBHARD LEBRECHT VON BLUCHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ideas are the seeds of thought, but they do not produce flowers unless the soil where they are sown is fertile.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every thought is a seed which inevitably will bear fruit of its own kind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
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
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Maid in Waiting
Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
People can live very simple lives, can't they? Tucked away, without thinking. I think the world is what you enter when you think--when you become educated, when you question--because you can be in the big world and be utterly provincial.
V. S. NAIPAUL
The Paris Review, fall 1998
The course of history has often been turned by sentiment, but by thought never. The thinkers are but valuable ornaments. A safe place is assigned to them on the world's mantelpiece, while humanity basks and blinks stupidly on the hearth.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
Alas! we make a ladder of our thoughts, where angels step, but sleep ourselves at the foot; our high resolve look down upon our slumbering acts.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
The Venetian Bracelet: The Lost Pleiad
Thought is the parent. If error has crept in among the little thoughts, and the children have become disobedient and refractory, it is not the parent's fault. Nor must you blame the children either; they are young yet, and you must not expect too much of them.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh