A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
When we were starting off as kids, just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job, was exciting.
It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.
Art makes us feel less alone. It makes us think: somebody else has thought this, somebody else has had these feelings.
Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.
Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.
My sister Tiffany told me years ago, ‘You can never write about me.’ Then she called six months ago and said she wanted to be in a story. She was worried people thought I didn’t like her.
Gratitude, warm, sincere, intense, when it takes possession of the bosom, fills the soul to overflowing and scarce leaves room for any other sentiment or thought.
Our parents set the moral tone of the family. They expected more of some of us and less of others, but never less than they thought we were capable of.
I do an hour’s yoga and go running every day. Then I see a picture of myself and I still look like a skinny, potbellied idiot – and I thought I had turned into this superhunk!
I think I have let ego get in the way sometimes – the pendulum swung pretty strongly. I was maybe a little overconfident at one point in my time, and then I went way the other way and thought I wasn’t capable of anything.
I don’t even think about a retirement program because I’m working for the Lord, for the Almighty. And even thought the Lord’s pay isn’t very high, his retirement program is, you might say, out of this world.
I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.’
I never really thought of myself as being an action hero or a leading man or any of that. I’m a character actor.
I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.
Even when I was going through difficult times, I never really thought about relying on others.
It’s my first record since my son is old enough to understand and I can’t even show it to him. Yes, it’s affected me, probably in the opposite of how anyone would have thought.
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
I find it soothing, the thought of a movie theater.
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
Things aren’t always the fairy tale that you thought they were.
Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.
There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything – millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.
If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self, where there is no need for your effort to reject the thoughts.
Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.
With me, I come in the ring and start thinking right away. My thought process is just to put a guy down. I’m like a technician and learn to break it all down – from head to toe.
The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.
The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
The act of learning to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain’s repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read deeply changed the very structure of that circuit’s connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of human thought.
‘Downward Spiral’ felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I’d explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.
I liked ‘Scream of the Banshee’ because it was a real challenge. I thought, ‘How am I going to pull off this character?’ But, I also thought, ‘Oh, man, I’m going to go for it.’ He’s got all the defects of character that an actor loves to play. So, I had a really great time.
I remember turning onto the street. I saw barricades and police officers and, just, people everywhere. When I saw all of that, I immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.
‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’
Discontent with this world gives such a painful longing to quit it that, if the heart finds comfort, it is solely from the thought that God wishes it to remain here in banishment.
Say ‘Toronto’ or ‘Ontario,’ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions.
What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.
I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.
I never kept up with the fashions. I believed in wearing what I thought looked good on me.
God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.
I never thought I was cute, ever.
Thought is the parent of the deed.
I have to say, if someone literally said to me, ‘You’re going off to a desert island, what is the one thing you would bring?’ I would say, ‘It’s my concealer or you can just kill me now.’ I’ve thought this through! Because I would find, like, berries in a bowl and make blush.
I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.
I’ve always thought that people need to feel good about themselves and I see my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way.
My motto in life is ‘If you think it, you can do it’ and if we all apply that thought we can end hunger the world over.
I never thought of losing, but now that it’ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.
All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.
