Quotes About Thought Life

“Though Charles II both craved and enjoyed female companionship till the end of his life, there is no question that by the cold, rainy autumn of 1682 his physical appetites had diminshed considerably. The Duchess of Portsmouth was, after all, more than twenty years his junior; and there comes a time in nearly every such relationship when the male partner is simply unable to fully accommodate the female partner. Or as Samuel Pepys tartly noted in his diary, the king yawns much in council, it is thought he spends himself overmuch in the arms of Madame Louise, who far from being wearied, seems fresher than ever after sporting with the king.”

— Antonia Fraser

“Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn't given the chance to live because I don't have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to speak it to. Especially if it's a particularly good sentence, a sentence with truth or beauty or humor or sadness to it. The best ones always take you by surprise. They sneak into your head while you're walking down the aisles at a supermarket, or flat-out assault you when you're at your grandmother's funeral, and you have to scramble to give the thought life before it's gone forever. Cocktail napkins, palms, text messages sent to yourself.”

— Adi Alsaid

“It is a strange thing how sometimes merely to talk honestly of God, even if it is only to articulate our feelings of separation and confusion, can bring peace to our spirits. You thought you were unhappy because this or that was off in your relationship, this or that was wrong in your job, but the reality is that your sadness stemmed from your aversion to, your stalwart avoidance of, God. The other problems may very well be true, and you will have to address them, but what you feel when releasing yourself to speak of the deepest needs of your spirit is the fact that no other needs could be spoken of outside of that context. You cannot work on the structure of your life if the ground of your being in unsure.”

— Christian Wiman

“He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well-fed, and benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in his head like a child in its mother's womb. He thought life was wonderful.”

— Ilya Ilf

“To remember love after long sleep; to turn again to poetry after a year in the market place, or to youth after resignation to drowsy and stiffening age; to remember what once you thought life could hold, after telling over with muddied and calculating fingers what it has offered; this is music, made after long silence. The soul flexes its wings, and, clumsy as any fledgling, tries the air again”

— Mary Stewart

“He claimed that no act or thought that did not have love as its purpose was of God. Love was the secret of God's perfection. Man was imperfect only because of his inability to live life as a continuous act of love.”

— Michael Puttonen

“In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.”

— Richard Hell

“When you cultivate a godly thought life your soul will shine and you will exhibit the presence of the Lord in you.”

— Elizabeth George

“No matter where life takes me, you'll find me with a smile. Presumed to be happy, always laughing like a child. I never thought life could be this sweet! It's got me cheesing from cheek to cheek!”

— Mac Miller

“As long as I keep moving, I should be OK. As long as I keep the notebook with me, I should stay alive. This is not what I thought life would be like when I turned sweet sixteen.”

— T.M. Goeglein

“He thought of how the world organises its affairs so that civilisation every day commits crimes for which any individual would be imprisoned for life. And how people accept this either by ignoring it and calling it current affairs or politics or wars,”

— Richard Flanagan

“Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct them toward truth.”

— Lysa TerKeurst

“Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand.”

— Dallas Willard

“Here is the endurance and the faith of the saints. Revelation 13:10 How does a believer get her thoughts to bow to the truth? By believing, speaking, and applying truth as a lifestyle. This step is something we live, not just something we do. We can't just shout, "Sit!" and expect the dog to stay there for a week. We've worked a long time to get that dog to sit, but it's still not going to sit forever. We don't achieve victory once and never have to bother with that thought problem again. Our thought life is something we'll be working on the rest of our lives in our desire to be godly.”

— Beth Moore

“Alas! this is not what I thought life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others ... And when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Her mind then was filled with tenderness and regret ... To cut an overgrown branch saddened her because it had once lived, and life was dear to her. Yes, and at the same time the fall of the branch would suggest to her how she must die herself and all the futility and evanescence of things. And then again quickly catching this thought up, with her instant good sense, she thought life had treated her well; even if fall she must, it was to lie on the earth and moulder sweetly into the roots of violets.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Must manage your thought life daily and then you can manage your life.”

— John C. Maxwell

“Show, Trisha. Dennis had seen a Trisha episode about people with depression, and thought maybe his dad had that. Dennis loved Trisha. It was a daytime talk show where ordinary people were given the opportunity to talk about their problems, or yell abuse at their relatives, and it was all presided over by a kindly looking but judgemental woman conveniently called ... Trisha. For a while Dennis thought life without his mum would be some kind of adventure. He'd stay up late, eat take-aways and watch rude comedy shows. However, as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, he realised that it wasn't an adventure at all.”

— David Walliams

“Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett had thought life could teach her no more. Now she felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.”

— Margaret Mitchell

“They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

— Malala Yousafzai

“I've never thought about the end of my career. I've had this growing motto in my life to live day to day - and when you live day to day, it's hard to talk years.”

— Troy Polamalu

“When I gave my life to the Lord, I thought I'd be a preacher.”

— Tim LaHaye

“It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?
We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.
And became as lonely as a shepherd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

“Wrapped in the overcoat, he dropped on the seat and faced the eternal verities of sky and sea. No land was intruding. It was the bowl of the sky closing down; the smooth wash of the sea rolling in; and away in the distance a faint red glow marked the spot where the sun threw its light on a world that was steadily turning from it.
There Jamie did some more thinking. He was having plenty of mental exercise in those days. He still thought Death, but at least he had a manlier thought in facing it. And when he thought Life he did not think of himself, or upbraid his government, or pity other wounded men. He thought merely of that one thing he might possibly do and what it might possibly be that would give him some justification, when he faced his Maker, for the spending of his latter days.”

— Gene Stratton-Porter

“We are beginning to comprehend a basic truth hitherto neglected, that our physical condition is determined very largely by our emotional condition, and our emotional life is profoundly regulated by our thought life.”

— Norman Vincent Peale

“Most people, if they were generous, were so because they thought life was short and that one must make the most of it. Sid Baxter was generous because he knew that life was long. It went on and on even when you had no use for it anymore. It was happiness, not life, that was short, and when it visited - in the form of a fine evening spent talking with a friend - he honoured it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

“Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought ... life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.”

— Clarice Lispector

“Even when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn't believe in miracles.”

— Juliet Marillier

“I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial ... I thought I knew a good deal about it all, I was sure I should not fail.”

— Winston S. Churchill

“But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“When he graduated he'd thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero's journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn't how it worked.”

— Lev Grossman

“Bear in mind you have a life to live. There is an incredible loss. There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.”

— Marya Hornbacher

“I was amazed at how the life of a freelancer differed from running a remote studio for another company. I thought I knew what I was doing in 2004 when I left Eidos because I had run Ion Storm Austin, which was my own independent studio. I had run a business unit inside Origin, but being part of a startup is crazy.”

— Warren Spector

“Thirrin could be charming when she forgot to be a princess. But just recently that happened only rarely, and Totus was beginning to wonder what was on her mind. He thought perhaps he knew, but couldn't be sure. And how exactly would one ask the heir apparent if she was afraid that she'd have to rule the country before she was ready, and if she was afraid that she'd have to rule the country before she was ready, and if she was frightened that her father would die before she'd had time to experience life properly?”

— Stuart Hill

“Before I knew my dear Milena, I thought life itself was unbearable. Then she came into my life and showed me that that was not so. True, our first meeting was not auspicious, for her mother answered the door, and what a strong forehead the woman had, with an inscription on it which read: "I am dead, and I despise anyone who is not." Milena seemed pleased that I had come, but much more pleased when I left. That day, I happened to look at a map of the city. For a moment it seemed incomprehensible to me that anyone would build a whole city when all that is needed was a room for her.”

— Lydia Davis

“Between 18 and 19 years old [in the 1950s] I came to Paris. I studied art. And that experience really did change my life. I was living hand to mouth. I walked everywhere. I thought, this city is incredible but you really have to experience it by walking it.”

— Robert Redford

“Sometimes, she thought, life makes you grow up early. And some people never grow up at all.”

— Matthew Thomas

“I lived in the world of poetry and ideas. I thought life was all about art and philosophy. In the military, I suddenly found out about the real world.”

— Shahin Najafi

“At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.”

— Mike Tyson

“The devil knows if he can capture your thought life he has won a mighty victory over you.”

— Smith Wigglesworth

“He [Hern] calls his center the Boulder Abortion Clinic and he said specifically that he didn't want to hide that word. I'm deeply opposed to the politicization of language and try to avoid it when I possibly can - I don't like being manipulated by terms like pro-life or pro-choice. To me, abortionist should be as neutral as podiatrist. But again, maybe it was one battle too many, because it certainly distracted his attention from what I thought was a really sympathetic piece.”

— John H Richardson

“God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of His Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances - things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada

“I've been in Philadelphia 10 years, man. I knew it was going to be a challenge, mentally. I always thought life would come to an end if I ever left Philadelphia. And I feel like a newborn. Being in Denver it's just a better situation for me. And I'm just happy that I feel like I got an opportunity where I can win basketball games here.”

— Allen Iverson

“Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible - and this is Art.”

— Swami Vivekananda

“Just when I thought life was over you came into my life.”

— Jon Jones

“The Law of Attraction attracts to you everything you need, according to the nature of your thought life.”

— Joseph Murphy

“Attitude is your thought life turned inside out”

— Joyce Meyer

“The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act.
"Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true ... pure ... if there be any virtue ... think on these things." Thus, the
follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly.”

— Ravi Zacharias

“I never thought life would be this sweet, It got me cheesing from cheek to cheek.”

— Mac Miller

“I didn't understand that you could go to jail for the rest of your life for selling cocaine. I thought life sentences were for murderers. I didn't know that you could get it for supplying something to someone that they asked you for.”

— Rick Ross