quotations about thought
Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana
Our thoughts are like roots which reach out in every direction into the cosmic ocean of formless energy, and these thought-roots set in motion vibrations like themselves and attract the affinities of our desires and ambitions.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
Great thoughts come from the heart.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
It is not the man that gives me most of outward things that helps me to live; but the man who gives me thoughts and ideas by which a wider sweep of beauty opens to my vision, and kindles in my holy affections, by which I rise nearer to God.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought,
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
To think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
Epistle to William Hogarth
If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Alias Grace
A fickle goddess Thought at times--
Try ne'er so hard we catch her not.
We try to think: 'tis all in vain--
Imprisoned never is a thought.
Like lightning flashing through the clouds,
It comes--a light, and then is gone,
A star which falls adown through space,
Again it comes as morning dawn.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"What is Thought?"
Each flying thought, a flying thought pursues.
C. B. LANGSTON
"Thought"
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Thoughts there are, not to be translated into any language, and spirits alone can read them.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
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 can wing its way
Swifter than lightning-flashes or the beam
That hastens on the pinions of the morn.
JAMES GATES PERCIVAL
"Sonnet", Clio
A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Thought is challenged only by thought.
KHALED AL-FAISAL
Arab News, May 15, 2017
Never know whose thoughts you're chewing.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon