Quotes About Mind

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he "couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him.

Our society has largely forgotten the importance of bodily posture for alertness, for digestion, and most importantly for one's psychophysical disposition. Zazen reminds the body, as well as the mind, of the beneficial effects of good posture. Moreover, zazen increases physical as well as mental flexibility, and in general it attunes our minds to the needs of the body, allowing the body to mindfully retune itself.

The cup of our mind is actually filled to the brim with swirling memories, plans, imaginings, and worries. Even without going so far as to empty the cup, a few minutes of physical stillness and calm attentiveness can allow the muddy water of the mind to stop swirling, such that the water begins to clear and the murky thoughts and emotions begin to settle.

Meditation is, to begin with, a practice of emptying the mind of this conceit that our own edited version of reality is the only unbiased and therefore valid one. It is a matter of recognizing that we are always, more or less, caught up in the reels of karmic editing.

actual I have learned many things I should never have known had I not tried the experiment. One of them is the precious science of patience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a soundless tidal wave of deepening thought.

efficiency could be properly judged. It would be judged by your self-discipline, your individual intelligence, your mental and emotional balance, your grasp of the true essentials based on your breadth of mind and depth of thought.

The original mistake, which was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the small group of courageous leaders.

The fear of death came and went, though right now her life force was strong. But she had never forgotten what went through her mind when she balanced on the railing of the bridge. Life wasn't just something that took care of itself. There were big black holes you could fall into with long, sharp spikes at the bottom, monstrous traps.

Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together.

There are evil circumstances and environments, not evil per se. But here I sense the actions of a truly darkened mind. Wallander reached for Svedberg's pocket calendar

No two moments are identical in a conscious being

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.

When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place.

Our primary task in solitude, therefore, is not to pay undue attention to the many faces which assail us, but to keep the eyes of our mind and heart on him who is our divine savior.

The Bible is primarily a book not of information but of formation, not merely a book to be analyzed, scrutinized, and discussed but a sacred book to nurture us, to unify our hearts and minds, and to serve as a constant source of contemplation

crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him. Real prayer comes from the heart.

We need centers where people are trained in true discernment of the signs of the times. They cannot offer just an intellectual training. Deep spiritual formation is required, involving the whole person—body, mind, and heart. Formation in the mind of Christ, "who did not cling to power but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, who did not cling" (Phil. 2:6-8)

It seems that in fact we live as if we should give as much of our heart, soul, and mind as possible to our fellow human beings, while trying hard not to forget about God…But Jesus' claim is much more radical. He asks for single-minded commitment to God and God alone. God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul.

Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure.

The first serious consciousness of Nature's gesture - her attitude towards life-took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, all insanity of force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting, and destroying what these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect.

Evolution of mind was altogether another matter and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war, Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals nor forts.

Harvard College was probably less hurtful than any other university then in existence. It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile.

The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp, or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself....Society swarmed with exaggerated characters; it contained little else.