Quotes About Consciousness

Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.

Constantly think of the universe as one living creature, embracing one being and soul; how all is absorbed into the one consciousness of this living creature; how it compasses all things with a single purpose, and how all things work together to cause all that comes to pass, and their wonderful web and texture.

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.

Things of themselves cannot touch the soul at all. They have no entry to the soul, and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, making all externals presented to it cohere with the judgements it thinks worthy of itself.

18. Enter their minds, and you'll find the judges you're so afraid of—and how judiciously they judge themselves.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small

Souviens toi que chacun ne vit que dans le moment présent, dans l'instant. Le reste, c'est le passé ou un obscur avenir. Petite est donc l'étendue de la vie.

things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me which they call the ruling principle? and whose soul have I now,—that of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does.

The things which are ex­ternal to my mind have no re­la­tion at all to my mind.

Your character is simply the sum of your thoughts over time.

Do nothing against thy will, nor contrary to the community, nor without due examination, nor with reluctancy.

Wherever you go, there you are—the same person, with the same patterns of thought.

everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream

What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child's soul, an adolescent's, a woman's? A tyrant's soul? The soul of a predator—or its prey?

The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience.

Inquire of yourself as soon as you wake from sleep, whether it will make any difference to you, if another does what is just and right. It will make no difference.

Self-contraction: the mind's requirements are satisfied by doing what we should, and by the calm it brings to us.

It is high time for thee, to understand that there is somewhat in thee, better and more divine than either thy passions, or thy sensual appetites and affections

My mind. What is it? What am I making of it? What am I using it for? Is it empty of thought? Isolated and torn loose from those around it? Melted into flesh and blended with it, so that it shares its urges?

thereby gain much leisure, and save much trouble, and therefore at every action a man must privately by way of admonition suggest unto himself, What? may not this that now I go about

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.