Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.
Those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. The fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. Of what value, then, is he who abbreviates the details of those matters of which he professes to render a complete account, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is composed? It is true that impatience, the mother of {18} stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to enable them to acquire a complete knowledge of one subject such as the human body! And then they seek to comprehend the mind of God, in which the universe is included, weighing it and splitting it into infinite particles, as if they had to dissect it!
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it.
My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being.
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
For those whom God to ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
It was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind.
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper— whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind, A savageness in unreclaimed blood.
The southern Aryans were absorbed in the struggles of thought: their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of existence, and the present, which ought to be the solution of both, seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth was to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though this is true chiefly before they were brought in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still visible in the Hindus as described by the companions of Alexander, nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to worship is the sphere of religion and philosophy, and nowhere have religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deeply in the mind of a nation as in India. History supplies no second instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed all the other faculties of a people.
The freer the mind is, the more powerful and worthy, the more useful, praiseworthy and perfect the prayer and the work become. A free mind can achieve all things. But what is a free mind? A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God’s most precious will, having gone out of what is its own. There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and its strength.
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.--_Johnson._
The true mind of a nation, at any period, is always best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest men.
This venerable name (Theosophy), so well known among early Christian thinkers, as expressing the highest conception of God within the reach of the human mind, has of late been so greatly misappropriated that it is high time to restore it to its proper function. It should be known once for all that one may call oneself a theosophist without ... believing in any occult sciences and black art.
Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire said … Perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been fashioning some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability. And yet some faith seems necessary in things of the spirit which are beyond the scope of our physical world, some reliance on moral, spiritual, and idealistic conceptions, or else we have no anchorage, no objectives or purpose in life. Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death.
Those who believe without having read the Old and New Testaments, do so because they have a saintly frame of mind, with which all that they hear of our Religion agrees. They feel that a God has made them; their will is to love God only, their will is to hate themselves only. They feel that they have no power of themselves, that they are unable to come to God, and if God come not to them, they can have no communion with him. And they hear our Religion declare that men must love God only, and hate self only, but that all being corrupt, and unfit for God, God made himself man to unite himself to us. No more is needed to convince men who have such a disposition and have a knowledge of their duty and of their incompetence.
Yield not thy neck / To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind / Still ride in triumph over all mischance.= 3
People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called upon to give them up.
A great man is one who affects the mind of his generation.
Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, / What gay distress! what splendid misery! / Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, / The mind annihilates and calls for more.
We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,--our retrospection will be all to the future.
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientifc methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.
It will be to many of the honest disciples of Christ a real day of Damascus, when the very name of miracle shall be struck out of the dictionary of Christian theology. The facts remain exactly as they are, but the Spirit of truth will give them a higher meaning. What is wanted for this is not less, but more, faith, for it requires more faith to believe in Christ without, than with, the help of miracles. Nothing has produced so much distress of mind, so much intellectual dishonesty, so much scepticism, so much unbelief, as the miraculous element forced into Christianity from the earliest days. Nothing has so much impeded missionary work as the attempt to persuade people first not to believe in their own miracles, and then to make a belief in other miracles a condition of their becoming Christians. It is easy to say 'You are not a Christian if you do not believe in Christian miracles.' I hope the time will come when we shall be told, 'You are not a Christian if you cannot believe in Christ without the help of miracles.'
Their cause I plead,--plead it in heart and mind; A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.
Were I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul; The mind's the standard of the man.
Juravi lingua, mentem injuratam gero=--I have sworn with my tongue, but I bear a mind unsworn.
The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer. For in him the dreamer is fortified against destruction by a far-seeing eye, a virile mind, a strong will, a robust courage. And so has perished the kindly dreamer — on the cross or in the garret. A democracy should not let its dreamers perish. They are its life, its guaranty against decay. Thus would I expand the sympathies of youth.
Ut ager, quamvis fertilis, sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus=--As a field, however fertile, can yield no fruit without culture, so neither can the mind of man without education.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
He that cannot keep his mind to himself cannot practise any considerable thing whatever.
This is the highest miracle of genius: that things which are not should be as though they were; that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.--_Macaulay._
Superior powers of mind and profound study are of no use if they do not sometimes lead a person to different conclusions from those which are formed by ordinary powers of mind without study.
My opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sureness the moment a second mind has adopted it.
You can't order remembrance out of a man's mind.
He that is violent in the pursuit of pleasure won't mind to turn villain for the purchase.
Non compos mentis=--Not sound in mind.
The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
O contemplators of things, do not pride yourselves for knowing those things which nature by herself and her ordination naturally conduces; but rejoice in knowing the purposes of those things which are determined by your mind.
No figure will be admirable if the gesture which expresses the passion of the soul is not visible in it. The most admirable figure is that which best expresses the passion of its mind.
Animus homini, quicquid sibi imperat, obtinet=--The mind of man can accomplish whatever it resolves on.
Night is the Sabbath of mankind, / To rest the body and the mind.
This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet.
The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.
Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth, And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. That is the secret to success. Swami Sivananda
You know how sometimes you remembered someone, or something, and you closed your eyes, but you couldn't imagine them. Like , you could kind of make them out in your mind, but you couldn't see them?
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Rejoice in joyous things--nor overmuch / Let grief thy bosom touch / Midst evil, and still bear in mind / How changeful are the ways of humankind.
An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor. For an actor to represent a Greek hero it is imperative he should have thoroughly studied those antique statues which have lasted to our day, and mastered the particular grace they exhibited in their postures, whether sitting, standing, or walking. Nor should he make attitude his only study. He should highly develop his mind by an assiduous study of the best writers, ancient and modern, which will enable him not only to understand his parts, but to communicate a nobler coloring to his manners and mien.--_Goethe._
Wherever a great mind utters its thoughts,--there is Golgotha.--_Heinrich Heine._
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
The happiness which comes from long practice, which leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar - this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one's own mind.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received at first with distrust.
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
Yes,” he says, he swallows, “I did. I do. I do want to be your friend.” He nods and I register the slight movement in the air between us. “I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,” he says. “The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette—” “No,” I gasp. “Don’t—don’t s-say that—” I don’t know what I’ll do if he keeps talking I don’t know what I’ll do and I don’t trust myself “I want to know where to touch you,” he says. “I want to know how to touch you. I want to know how to convince you to design a smile just for me.” I feel his chest rising, falling, up and down and up and down and “Yes,” he says. “I do want to be your friend.” He says “I want to be your best friend in the entire world.” I can’t think. I can’t breathe “I want so many things,” he whispers. “I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time.” His fingers graze the hem of my top and he says “I want this up.” He tugs on the waist of my pants and says “I want these down.” He touches the tips of his fingers to the sides of my body and says, “I want to feel your skin on fire. I want to feel your heart racing next to mine and I want to know it’s racing because of me, because you want me. Because you never,” he says, he breathes, “never want me to stop. I want every second. Every inch of you. I want all of it.” And I drop dead, all over the floor.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
And not only does he live inside of you, he rules all the situations, locations, and relationships that are out of your control. He is not only your indwelling Savior, he is your reigning King. He does in you what you could not do for yourself and he does outside of you what you have no power or authority to do. And he does all of this with your redemptive good in mind. Since this is true, why would you give way to fear?
The face is the index of the mind.
Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind, / More than quick words do move a woman's mind.
Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10000 years ago.
The wife that expects to have a good name / Is always at home as if she were lame; / And the mind that is honest, her chiefest delight, / Is still to be doing from morning till night.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Absence of occupation is not rest; / A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.
The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints.
Edel macht das Gemuth, nicht das Geblut=--It is the mind, not the blood, that ennobles.
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups … So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
Labour of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness (for the mind); it has a constant and imperishable moral.
Atheism is a mark of strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.
Le travail du corps delivre des peines de l'esprit; et c'est ce qui rend les pauvres heureux=--Bodily labour alleviates the pains of the mind, and hence arises the happiness of the poor.
If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.
The human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress in disentangling it.
As the evolution of nature can be studied with any hope of success in those products only which nature has left us, the evolution of mind also can be effectually studied in those products only which mind itself has left us. These mental products in their earliest form are always embodied in language, and it is in language, therefore, that we must study the problem of the origin, and of the successive stages in the growth of mind.
Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where, / And when, and how thy business may be done, / Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller, / Though he alights sometimes, still goeth on.
Out of sight out of mind.
L'esprit a son ordre, qui est par principes et demonstrations, le c?ur en a un autre=--The mind has its way of proceeding by principles and demonstrations; the heart has a different method.
Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.
The errors of a great mind are more edifying than the truths of a little.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
How comes it that we have so much patience with those who are maimed in body, and so little with those who are defective in mind? Because a cripple recognises that we have the true use of our legs, but the fool maintains that we are they whose understanding halts; were it not so we should feel pity and not anger.
Who can do nothing of sovran worth / Which men shall praise, a higher task may find, / Plodding his dull round on the common earth, / But conquering envies rising in the mind.
Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect loves, nor lets them close: Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrranic power depose. And therefore her decrees of steel Us as the distant Poles have placed (Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel) Not by themselves to be embraced, Unless the giddy heaven fall, And earth some new convulsion tear; And, us to join, the world should all Be cramped into a planisphere. As lines (so loves) oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet. Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?--_Prior._
Craftiness is a quality in the mind and a vice in the character.
Manners are not idle, but the fruit / Of loyal nature and of noble mind.
Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind, But leave, oh leave the light of Hope behind! What though my winged hours of bliss have been Like angel visits, few and far between.
The best mind-altering drug is the truth.
Be ye all of one mind.
I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
The infinite was not discovered behind the veil of nature only, though its manifestation in physical phenomena was no doubt the most primitive and the most fertile source of mythological and religious ideas. There were two more manifestations of the infinite and the unknown, which must not be neglected, if we wish to gain a complete insight into the theogonic process through which the human mind had to pass from its earliest days. The infinite disclosed itself not only in nature but likewise in man, looked upon as an object, and lastly in man looked upon as a subject. Man looked upon as an object, as a living thing, was felt to be more than a mere part of nature. There was something in man, whether it was called breath or spirit or soul or mind, which was perceived and yet not perceived, which was behind the veil of the body, and from a very early time was believed to remain free from decay, even when illness and death had destroyed the body in which it seemed to dwell. There was nothing to force even the simplest peasant to believe that because he saw his father dead, and his body decaying, therefore what was known as the man himself, call it his soul or his mind or his person, had vanished altogether out of existence. A philosopher may arrive at such an idea, but a man of ordinary understanding, though terrified by the aspect of death, would rather be inclined to believe that what he had known and loved and called his father or mother must be somewhere, though no longer in the body.... It is perhaps too much to say that such a belief was universal; but it certainly was and is still very widely spread. In fact it constitutes a very large portion of religion and religious worship.