Minding Quotes (page 112)
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A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope...
John Berger
Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it he endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind.
Stephen Crane
I just told them that dear Uncle Silas has gone away on a long journey," she said. "They're such mites, you know, and I've never let them hear about Death, or have ugly toys or stories about ogres and things. I mean, I do frightfully believe in keeping their little minds free from everything but happy, beautiful things, don't you?
Georgette Heyer
Some people are confident because they are fools. Leonard had the look of someone who was confident because, so far, he'd never found reason not to be. He would step off a high building in the happy state of mind of someone who intended to deal with the problem of the ground when it presented itself.
Terry Prachett
In the Author’s mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. For me it invariable begins with mental pictures. This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a Form: a verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the Author’s impulse complete. (from the essay Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said)
C. S. Lewis
Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and turn it into wisdom. His mind had no horizon - and his sympathy had no warp. He could talk to children, telling them very profound things so that they understood. He lived in a world of wonders, of excitement. He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell. Everyone who knew him was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, 'I really must do something nice for Doc.
John Steinbeck
Well, it kind of hurts when the kind of words you write. And kind of turn themselves into knives. And don't mind my nerve you can call it fiction'Cause I like being submerged in your contradictions, dear'Cause here we are, here we are. Although you were biased, I love your advice. Your comebacks they're quick and probably Have to do with your insecurities. There's no shame in being crazy depending on how you take these. Words they're paraphrasing this relationship we're staging. And it's a...
Jason Mraz
A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.
Thomas Merton
The name that no human research can discover--But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation. Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable. Effanineffable. Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
T. S. Eliot
...; the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks...
Joseph Conrad
And I'm afraid it really is a jungle too," pursued the Consul, "in fact I expect Rousseau to come riding out of it at any moment on a tiger." "What's that?" Mr Quincey said, frowning in a manner that might have meant: And God never drinks before breakfast either."On a tiger," the Consul repeated. The other gazed at him a moment with the cold sardonic eye of the material world. "I expect so," he said sourly. "Plenty tigers. Plenty elephants too... Might I ask you if the next time you inspect...
Malcolm Lowry