Mind

"Gentlemen,” said Earl Lavender, with perfect complacence, “it becomes you to make a charge of madness against me. I told my friend Lord Brumm a little ago that you have no minds, and I am convinced of it. As you are possibly unaware of the fact, I may as well explain to you how you have arrived at this not altogether unenviable condition. In your youth, I judge from the contour of your heads that you thought and imagined as much as the average young man; but since the strongest convictions you ever entertained were that money makes the mare to go, and that cakes and ale are good, you gradually ceased to think until your minds stopped working altogether, and as your brains grew atrophied your livers increased in power. Now, I suppose, you have digestive apparatuses unmatched in proficiency, while your heads, instead of blossoming like an evergreen in a bowpot, have changed into cinerary urns, containing the ashes of your thought and fancy, and rudely carved with half-intelligible hieroglyphics concerning religion and morality, and copy-book mottoes for the conduct of life. You are perfect types; I recognize that, and would not have you other than you are. I merely wish to let you know that I understand you thoroughly, and to give you the means when you come to die of consoling yourselves with the reflection that you were understood and pardoned by at least one fellow-creature. Most men I have been told die miserable because they think everybody has misunderstood them. Rejoice, therefore, for that lot cannot now be yours."

"She sat still, I thought, and yet she traveled. And when one stitches, the mind travels, not the way men do, with ax and oxen through the wilderness, but surely our traveling counted too, as motion. And I thought of the patience of the stitches. Writing a book, I thought, which men often do, but women only rarely, has the posture of sewing. One hand leads, and the other hand helps. And books, like quilts, are made, one word at a time, one stitch at a time."

"Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a malignant mentality which in its inevitable dissolution would have poisoned other and greater minds."

"The human brain always concocts biases to aid in the construction of a coherent mental life, exclusively suitable for an individual’s personal needs."

"Every single human being is neurologically predisposed to be biased in various walks of life. It is biologically impossible to be absolutely free from all biases, nevertheless, the more a person rigorously trains the self to be rational and conscientious, the more that self becomes strong enough to keep the biases in check, never to let them run rampant over the psyche."

"Good and evil are both fundamental features of the human mind."

"One way or another we are all biased, but still we have the modern cortical capacity to choose whether or not to let the harmful biases dictate our behavior."

"...a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom."

"Perhaps we should rejoice that people’s emotions aren’t designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one’s group is to displace, subjugate, or annihilate the group next door. Ants in a colony are closely related, and each is a paragon of unselfishness. That’s why ants are one of the few kinds of animal that wage war and take slaves. When human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their interests into the group’s, the outcomes are some of the history’s worst atrocities."

"Still in my mind the old days scenario is playing OVER AND OVER"

"Our minds,the future of tomorrow"

"At the time, it seemed everything was falling apart by no reason. My mind was dramatic in its ignorant stage. I knew nothing of what love was, nor the presence of a greater being within myself. Everything seemed overwhelming, and little did I know, I would conquer the voids of this falsity."

"I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream...but there is no one there to hear me."

"the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time"

"My head's under water but am breathing fine"

"There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one's mind."

"When you don't grasp something or remember something, I think your mind at last says, "Okay," and part of it accepts this. In the end your mind gets to welcome that deadening. that's what I believe anyway. Half of our memoryloss is by choice."

"If you love someone...tell them often. If you haven't had time for loved ones... make it. If you've been holding someone hostage through anger...free them & yourself. If someone crosses your mind...reach out. Time waits for no one. Most of us have more time behind us than we do in front of us so live, love, laugh every chance you get. Create memories that outlive you!"

"He kept coming back to the silence. It was so big. And surprising. Even when a donkey brayed somewhere in the same valley - loud, long and loaded with loneliness - it did not change the silence, it enhanced it. Like jewels around a beautiful neck. Ed smiled. You can be at the poshest hotel in the country, on the planet even, but a farmer can still put a lonely donkey in the field next door. In the same way he couldn't control what arose in his mind - or appears in the world around him - but he could give it space."

"Learning to leave his mind in meditation could be compared to snorkelling, which is breathing with his face under water. Which is just wrong!It had taken a lot of time and nagging for his brain to get used to snorkelling, for all those doubts and questions to be overcome - for him to relax and just breathe. Learning to leave his mind in meditation was the same kind of challenge; when there was a gap in his thoughts, when a space opened up, to resist the temptation to immediately fill it up - instead for him to relax and just breathe."