Quotes About Mind

Why this lack of penetration as to their personal affairs in men whose business it is to penetrate all things? Perhaps the mind cannot be complete at all points; perhaps artists of every kind live too much in the present moment to study the future; perhaps they are too observant of the ridiculous to notice snares, or they may believe that none would dare to lay a snare for such as they.

Never in his life had Godefroid seen so wonderful a sight; he could scarcely control his emotions. Another wonder, for all was wondrous in this scene, so full of horror and yet of poesy, was that in those who saw it soul alone existed. This atmosphere, filled with mental emotions only, had a celestial influence. Those present felt their bodies as little as the sick woman felt hers. They were all mind.

Besides, his tact had discovered to him the real nature of Delphine; he divined instinctively that she was capable of stepping over her father's corpse to go to the ball; and within himself he felt that he had neither the strength of mind to play the part of mentor, nor the strength of character to vex her, nor the courage to leave her to go alone.

What is a feeling if not a world in a thought?

Time is the only capital of those who just have their inteligence as fortune.

This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters.

and so convinced are we that each mood while it lasts will be the permanent temper of our soul

Reason is only a drug, and its effects cannot be permanent.

Let mental suffering be intense enough, and it becomes a sort of carminative.

the sun would set, and then our riders could watch the actual process of colour fading from the world. Was that tree still really green, or was it only that they were remembering how a few seconds ago it had been green?

And, judging from Dame Jessamine's serene and smiling face, he had succeeded in removing completely the terrible impression produced by her husband's parting words, and in restoring to what she was pleased to call her mind its normal condition, namely that of a kettle that contains just enough water to simmer comfortably over a low fire.

You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.

Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Grant me, sound of body and of mind, to pass an old age lacking neither honor nor the lyre.

Anger is short-lived madness.

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Tradition makes the most horrible things acceptable to the mind which becomes blind to their deformity, and even the most detestable things, desirable, by a certain feigned sanctity which it attaches to them. But the charm once broken, the rational mind becomes transformed into another image, totally different, and entirely repugnant to the things which it before venerated as divine.

Your mind is like Heraclitus' river. Your mind, in fact, is like nineteenth-century father of psychology William James' "stream of consciousness," a bubbling, babbling brook. Your mind constantly produces different currents of associations, different swirls of thought, and different moods.

In an attempt to learn more about what happened during a lobotomy, Freeman tried performing them with the patient wide awake, under local anesthesia. During one of these procedures, Freeman asked the patient, while cutting his brain tissue, what was going through his mind. "A knife," the patient said. Freeman told this story with pleasure for years.

With this generic view of mind changing as background, I teased out a number of crucial dimensions. These can serve as a checklist when one is considering candidates for mind changing:

CHANGING MINDS THROUGH REPRESENTATIONAL REDESCRIPTION

On the contrary, we seem to be strongly disposed to irrationality, as examples below will illustrate. Therefore, the idea that we can understand how beliefs should be formed by looking indiscriminately at how they are formed is a hopeless task. Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds (1994), by cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini sums up much of this evidence

The mind flies out to objects of its love And finds impenetrable forms and shapes That you can formulate when you pin down Each butterfly of thought upon your board. from "Letter to an Imaginary Brazil