Mind quotations
Nash Ogden 1902-1971
‘Lines on Facing Forty'
I have a bone to pick with Fate.
Come here and tell me, girlie,
Do you think my mind is maturing late,
Or simply rotted early?
Nietzsche Friedrich 1844-1900
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
Olivier Sir Laurence 1907-1989
(introduction to his screen adaptation of Hamlet)
The tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.
Orton Joe 1933-1967
Entertaining Mr. Sloane
Even if he thee worshipped with his body, his mind would be elsewhere.
Orton William A.
If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it.
Overstreet Harry A. 1876-1970
The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.
Pirsig Robert M.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
That's the classical mind at work, runs fine inside but looks dingy on the surface.
Plath Sylvia 1932-1963
‘Apprehensions'
Is there no way out of the mind?
Plath Sylvia 1932-1963
When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
The Dunciad
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind.
Prior Matthew 1664-1721
‘An English Padlock'
Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind;
Let all her ways be unconfined;
And clap your padlock - on her mind.
Pritchett V.S. 1900-1997
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
Proust Marcel 1871-1922
Guermantes Way
There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.
Proust Marcel 1871-1922
Time Regained
For if unhappiness develops the forces of the mind, happiness alone is salutary to the body.
Proverbs and Sayings
An indecent mind is a perpetual feast.
Punch 1841-1992
What is Matter? - Never mind.
What is Mind? - No matter.
Rand Ayn 1905-1982
What is a demanding pleasure? A pleasure that demands the use of one's mind; not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising
discrimination, judgement, awareness.
Sarah Duchess of York 1959-
(as spokesperson for US Weightwatchers)
Free your mind and your bottom will follow.
Seneca c.4 BC-AD 65
A good mind possesses a kingdom: a great fortune is a great slavery.
Shadwell Thomas 1642-1692
A True Widow
And wit's the noblest frailty of the mind.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
The Apple Cart
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
Spenser Edmund c.1552-1599
The Faerie Queen
The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed,
As by his manners.
Steele Sir Richard 1672-1729
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Steele Sir Richard 1672-1729
A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.
Stevens Wallace 1879-1955
‘Of Mere Being'
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises ...
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm.
Thompson Francis 1859-1907
‘The Hound of Heaven'
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Trollope Anthony 1815-1882
Ayala's Angel
A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.
Trollope Anthony 1815-1882
The Small House at Allington
I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.
Vauvenargues Marquis de 1715-1747
The mind reaches great heights only by spurts.
Watson Sir William 1858-1936
A Study in Contrasts
The staid, conservative,
Came-over-with-the Conqueror type of mind.
Welch Raquel
The mind can also be an erogenous zone.
Westcott Edward Noyes 1846-1898
The only man who can change his mind is the man who's got one.
Wilbur Richard
‘Mind'
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.
Wolfe Thomas 1900-1938
Look Homeward, Angel
Most of the time we think we're sick, it's all in the mind.
Wollstonecraft Mary 1759-1797
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only
seeks to adorn its prison.
Woolf Virginia 1882-1941
The Common Reader ‘Modern Fiction'
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day.
Wordsworth William 1770-1850
„The Fountain"
The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
Wordsworth William 1770-1850
‘Lines composed ... above Tintern Abbey'
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things.
