Quotes on Thinking

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.

In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.

I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?

Going back after a long time will make you made, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it. The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Being happy or unhappy - is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness - a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.

The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

Often miracles are happening right in front of our eyes, but we think they should look different, so we miss them though they're right there.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I still think that maybe the "afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe we are just matter, and matter gets recycled

I never decide if an idea is good or bad until I try it. So much of what gets in the way of things being good is thinking that we know. And the more that we can remove any baggage we're carrying with us, and just be in the moment, use our ears, and pay attention to what's happening, and just listen to the inner voice that directs us, the better.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."

There are so many factors when you think of your own films. You think of the people you worked on it with, and somehow forget the movie. You can't forgive the movie for a long time. It takes a few years to look at it with any objectivity and forgive its flaws.

It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.

See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.

Whatever that be which thinks, understands, wills, and acts, it is something celestial and divine.