Quotes About Mind

How much should a Stoic grieve? In proper grief, Seneca tells Polybius, our reason "will maintain a mean which will copy neither indifference nor madness, and will keep us in the state that is the mark of an affectionate, and not an unbalanced, mind.

Although all things in excess bring harm, the greatest danger comes from excessive good fortune: it stirs the brain, invites the mind to entertain idle fancies, and shrouds in thick fog the distinction between falsehood and truth.

The Stoics' advocacy of sexual reserve will sound prudish to modern readers, but they had a point. We live in an age of sexual indulgence, and for many people the consequences of this indulgence have been catastrophic in terms of their peace of mind.

Seneca points out that by causing our bodies to deteriorate, old age causes our vices and their accessories to decay. The same aging process, though, needn't cause our mind to decay; indeed, Seneca remarks that despite his age, his mind "is strong and rejoices that it has but slight connexion with the body." He is also thankful that his mind has thereby "laid aside the greater part of its load."3

Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind. - Epicurus

Psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has gone so far as to argue that conscious will is an illusion—that despite appearances, what causes my finger to rise is not my consciously willing that it rise but something else.

When you command, remember 'tis but speech To bid a thing be acted to your mind

Love to faults is always blind,Always is to joy inclin'd,Lawless, wing'd, and unconfin'd,And breaks all chains from every mind.

To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anti-communism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind;

Far and away the most important lesson to impart to the American mind and soul: regardless of our lifetime of education to the contrary, US foreign policy does not 'mean well.

Your thoughts shape and mold the energy around you. You hold the power of creation in every thought.

Souls create their own heaven or hell by the way they manage their thoughts.

As long as humans follow the dictates of the mind they will remain separated from their spiritual essence and continue to be manipulated.

that core essence that dwells beyond our chattering mind.

But what is Whiggery?A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mindThat never looked out of the eye of a saintOr out of drunkard's eye.

Hands, do what you're bid:Bring the balloon of the mindThat bellies and drags in the windInto its narrow shed.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

If there's no hatred in a mindAssault and battery of the windCan never tear the linnet from the leaf.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mindAnd lost the old nonchalance of the hand;Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,We are but critics, or but half create.

One sinks in on God; we do not see the truth; God sees the truth in us…. Tell them, Fool, that when the life and the mind are broken, the truth comes through them like peas through a broken peascod.

My temptation is quiet.Here at life's endNeither loose imagination,Nor the mill of the mindConsuming its rag and bone,Can make the truth known.

An old man's eagle mind.

An intellectual hate is the worst.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.