Quotes About Mind

feelings are one of the most inconsistent aspects of the human person.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. – William Penn –

That's the thing I hate most about my brain, the way it stores and catalogs things, all this dumb shit on a giant hard drive in my head, so I'm forced to obsess over it all like a crazy person.

In the mind there is no absolute faculty of willing and not willing, but only of particular volitions, namely, this or that affirmation, or this or that negation."50 We do suspend our belief in some ideas, in a manner of speaking, Spinoza allows. But what this really means is that we affirm some other idea—namely, that the first idea is uncertain.

This is the life of the mind in the twilight of the meritocracy: cliquish, careerist, and militantly committed to the mere appearance of objectivity.

To think freely about things is also to separate ourselves from the flesh we are crammed into. To escape from that limiting cage that is our flesh, to break free of our chains and take flight into pure reason. In reason lies the natural life. That's what is at the core of freedom of thought." (66)

It only not calms and tones the nerves, but it acts very deeply to restore and improve the nerves of sense and thought.

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time — toward the same object, the same person — want to harm and want to do good.

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

only the heat of that compassion united with wisdom can melt the ore in our minds, so as to liberate the gold of our fundamental nature.

As the Dalai Lama explains: "Patience safeguards our peace of mind in the face of adversity. . .

We expend a lot of effort to improve the external conditions of our lives, but in the end it is always the mind that creates our experience of the world and translates it into well-being or suffering. If we transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives. It is this kind of transformation that is brought about by the form of mind-training known as meditation.

There's nothing odd about the fact that what we conceive corresponds to what we perceive .

As a complement to science, therefore, we must also cultivate a "science of the mind, "or what we can call spirituality. This spirituality is not a luxury but a necessity.

While the insights of science can help us change our world, only human thought and concern can enlighten us about the path we should follow in life. As a complement to science, therefore, we must also cultivate a "science of the mind, "or what we can call spirituality. This spirituality is not a luxury but a necessity.

The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality. To

When they hypnotize us, ammonia becomes rose water, charcoal becomes chocolate, a top hat becomes a baby to be cradled. We drink, we eat, we rock our long-lost babies from the before. Their questions are never to do with the before. What before? What is the question? We are never sure, only that they have one and they have an answer, too. To be hypnotizable is proof of the invisible lesion on our brains and so proof of our hysteria.

It's funny how, having nice thoughts in your head, it is so pleasant to pull them all out and think them all over again.

that is the way with love affairs--they occupy your mind wholly for a time, and then they become distant countries where you no longer speak the language and have forgotten all the landmarks. [Édouard Manet]

jealousy is a sign of a shallow mind and weak character.

Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary.

Mais nous croyons que l'esprit reconstruit ses souvenirs sous la pression de la société. . . que celle-ci le détermine à transfigurer ainsi le passé . . // But we believe that the mind reconstructs its memories under the pressure of society. . . that this causes the mind to transfigure the past . . .

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.