Quotes About Thought

I have been pursuing my own train of thought for more than thirty years, undisturbed by all this, just because it is what I must do, and I could not do otherwise, out of an instinctive drive which is nonetheless supported by the confidence that what is thought truly and what throws light on obscurity will be grasped at some point by another thinking mind.XX

A pena está para o pensamento como a bengala está para o andar. Da mesma maneira que se caminha com mais leveza sem bengala, o pensamento mais pleno se dá sem a pena. Apenas quando uma pessoa começa a ficar velha ela gosta de usar bengala e pena.

Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle - an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!

The highest, i.e., the most general concepts, are the poorest; ultimately these are just empty shells, as, e.g., being, essence, thing, becoming, ect. - incidentally, whatever could philosophical systems produce when they are merely spun out of these same concepts and have as their matter only such empty shells of thought? They must be infinitely empty and poor, and therefore, turn out to be tedious and suffocating.

We sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.

The world is my idea:"—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness.

Il ne nous est pas parmi de parler de raison absolue, et il n'existe pas plus une raison en général qu'il n'existe un triangle en général, si ce n'est sous forme de raison abstraite, obtenue discursivement par la pensée et qui, à titre de représentation extraite d'une représentation, n'est qu'un moyen d'embrasser par l'esprit beaucoup de chose en une seule

Simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means a stupid or confused mind.

It would be of general service to German authors if they discerned that while a man should, if possible, think like a great mind, he should speak the same language as every other person. Men should use common words to say uncommon things.

Bref, très peu de gens savent réfléchir, mais tous veulent avoir des opinion ;

DüÅŸünmemekte hoÅŸ bir hayat vard?r. -Sophokles, Aias

O, wie wenig muss doch einer zu denken gehabt haben, damit er soviel hat lesen können!

Ah! How little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much. And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive.

The world is idea.

It's a battle of those who know how to think against those who know how to hate.

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought.

It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain

I also thought about Lady Breckenridge. After a heartbreak last year, I was not in the mood to fall in love with another lady, but Lady Breckenridge had demanded nothing of me.

She considered my request for a moment.

With repetition, a lot of mental functioning becomes automatic and effortless, as when you drive a car to work. Novel situations, however, usually require conscious thought and "workaround" solutions, which are slower to develop, more difficult to execute, and more prone to error.

Somewhere in my mind, I must have been aware of the possibility that

she thought to herself.

The notion isn't as absurd as it sounds.