Quotes About Mind

Our body-minds tumble, shift, ease their way through space and time, never static. Gender transition in its many forms is simply another kind of motion. I lived in a body-mind assigned female at birth and made peace with it as a girl, a tomboy, a dyke, a queer woman, a butch. But uncovering my desire to transition—to live as a genderqueer, a female-to-male transgender person, a white guy—challenged everything I thought I knew about self-acceptance and love.

What unknown abilities had filled this void? Was the world somehow brighter, more tangible, without the nagging interference of language? Was the absence of words actually a form of freedom? I've often tried to quiet that constant voice in my mind, to try to experience the world the way they might—but always the questions rush in faster than I can carve out a moment of true silence.

Okay. Now, don't let any of this lower your mirth index. Think of Tamerlane." My grandfather used to comfort my mother, during her childhood, by reminding her that they might have been related to Tamerlane. "Okay," I said, though I had never seen how Tamerlane helped anything. "Remember, you have the best heart and mind, and whatever you do is right. Bye-bye, my sweet. Don't forget the fruit group.

Thoughts are like an open ocean, they can either move you forward within its waves, or sink you under deep into its abyss.

A joke is a question of mind over manner.

We should be carefree with our bodies and prudish with our brains, not the contrary. How virtuous we are with our flesh, and yet the first foul thought that comes our way is invited to the depths of our soul.

There are but two states to the primitive mind: warring and boring.

Whatever else we may also be discussing, "enlightenment" was a concern with the understanding of the historical evolution of the human mind.

Though never losing his taste for seclusion, he developed a talent for getting on with people in all walks of life, and those who came to consult or visit him were impressed as much by his courtesy and humour as by his wisdom and the quality of his mind.

Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.

Reading his account leaves one with the impression that being taken out of oneself, forgetting oneself as an individual, as he puts it, invariably leads to a contemplative state from which all passion is absent. In fact, he describes the aesthetic attitude as an objective frame of mind, as if stepping into another world, 'where everything that moves our will, and thus violently agitates us, no longer exists'.20

There may still be people who think of Carl Gustav Jung only as a distinguished psychiatrist who enlarged our understanding of the mind and who also made important contributions to psychotherapy. He did both, but his variety of analysis is not simply concerned with the relief of neurotic symptoms; it promises a secular form of salvation. Jung was a spiritual teacher as well as a physician.

Music can order our muscular system. I believe that it is also able to order our mental contents.

Some split between the inner world and outer world is common to all behaviour, and the need to bridge the gap is the source of creative behaviour.

The mind must make its own happiness; any troubles can be endured if the sufferer has resources of his own to sustain him.

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

Brains can be healthy and still not work well.

A nadie le vino la cordura antes que la insensatez. LUCIO ANNEO SÉNECA

In the Dhammap?da, happiness and unhappiness are said to originate in the mind: 'Speak or act with a corrupted mind, And suffering follows As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. … Speak or act with a peaceful mind, And happiness follows Like a never-departing shadow.

According to Seneca: 'Turning pale, shedding tears, the first stirrings of sexual arousal, a deep sigh, a suddenly sharpened glance, anything along these lines: whoever reckons them a clear token of passion and a sign of the mind's engagement is just mistaken and fails to understand that they're involuntary bodily movements.

Epictetus has this to say about the role of habits: 'Generally then, if you want to make something a habit, practise it; and if you do not want to make it a habit, do not do it, but get in the habit of doing something else. It is the same in relation to things of the mind.

Marcus Aurelius writes: 'The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts.

I do not like detached creation. Neither can I conceive of the mind as detached from itself. Each of my works, each diagram of myself, each glacial flowering of my inmost soul dribbles over me.