Quotes About Mind

For the most dangerous of all forms of concealment is that of the crime itself in the mind of the guilty party. His permanent consciousness of it prevents him from imagining how generally it is unknown, how readily a complete lie would be accepted, and on the other hand from realising at what degree of truth other people will detect, in words which he believes to be innocent, a confession.

his imagination and did not feed his jealousy. Swann's mind would become exhausted, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he would exclaim: "We must trust in God," like those who, after having persisted in embracing the problem of the reality of the external world or the immortality of the soul, grant their tired brains the relief of an act of faith.

in the state of mind in which we "observe" we are a long way below the level to which we rise when we create.

It is often only for want of the creative spirit that we do not go far enough in suffering. And the most terrible reality brings us, at the same time as suffering, the joy of a beautiful discovery, for all that it does is to lend a new and explicit form to what we had long been turning over in our minds without suspecting

Reality is formed only by memory.

Al??kanl?k! Zihnimizin haftalar boyunca geçici bir düzende azap çekmesine göz yuman al??kanl?k, ama o olmasa, kendi imkanlar?yla s?n?rl? kalan zihnimizin bize içinde ya?anabilecek bir bar?nak sunamayaca?? için, her ?eye ra?men buldu?u zaman sevindi?i, o becerikli ama a??rkanl? düzenliyici!

Suddenly there came a memory which I had not seen for a long time, for it had remained dissolved in the transparent, fluid expanses of my memory, until it formed into crystals.

To know a thing does not enable us, always, to prevent its happening, but after all the things that we know we do hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can dispose of them as we choose, which gives us the illusion of a sort of power to control them

Il devient dangereux au contraire quand, au lieu de nous éveiller à la vie personnelle de l'esprit, la lecture tend à se substituer à elle, quand la vérité ne nous apparaît plus comme un idéal que nous ne pouvons réaliser que par le progrès intime de notre pensée et par l'effort de notre cœur...

It is as if the minds of people of action, and smart people are people of action (on a minuscule, microscopic scale, but still action), are so consumed by attention to what will be happening in an hour's time that they commit very little to memory.

that healing attack of mental alienation which is sleep

Those who have minds have no regard for birth.

every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.

Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible

Habit! that skilful but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable.

Perhaps the immobility of the things around us is imposed on them by our certainty that they are themselves and not others, by the immobility of our mind confronting them.

Habit! – that skilful but very slow housekeeper who begins by letting our mind suffer for weeks in a temporary arrangement; but whom we are nevertheless very happy to find, for without habit and reduced to no more than its own resources, our mind would be powerless to make a lodging habitable.

The past lies hidden beyond the mind's realm and reach, in some material object (in the sensation that material object gives us). And it depends entirely on chance whether or not we encounter that object before we die.

And, till we came to Doncières, M. de Charlus, without any fear of shocking his audience, would speak sometimes in the plainest terms of morals which, he declared, for his own part he did not consider either good or evil. He did this from cunning, to shew his breadth of mind, convinced as he was that his own morals aroused no suspicion in the minds of the faithful.

Even if we live in a hermetically sealed compartment, associations of ideas, memories continue to act upon us.

But the ideas that leave no possibility of a rejoinder are those that are not properly speaking ideas, those that, by being supported by nothing, find nothing to attach to in the other's mind: on the one side, no brotherly branch is held out, and on the other, there is nothing but a vacuum. The arguments advanced by M. de Norpois (on questions of art) were indisputable because they were devoid of reality.

There can be no peace in mind of love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires.

also the constituents of his memory: this tittle-tattle enlightened me as to the incalculable proportions of absence and presence of mind, of recollection and forgetfulness which go to form the human intelligence;

My happiness and my life needed Albertine to be virtuous, thus they had posited once for all that she was. Armed with this salutary faith, I could safely allow my mind to play sadly with the suppositions which it formulated without believing in them. I thought, "Perhaps she does love women," as one thinks, "I might die during the night"; we say the words to ourselves, but we do not believe them, we make plans for the morrow.