Thoughtfulness

“ Ah, but what, we must ask ourselves, of the great brain that conceived the idea, the foresight which told the exact moment when to put it into action, the cool courage which seized the moment—what of the grasp of affairs, the knowledge of men? ”

“ What we wish to contemplate here are the plain facts, the knowledge of which enlivens and enriches one’s mind and nature. If the contemplation of them kindles one’s fancy or excites one’s emotions, these results at least will not be second-hand. ”

“ At best more watchful this, but that more strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to reason still attend.
Attention, habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains. ”

“ And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him,—the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man.
3. There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect. Beside the relation of things to virtue, they have a relation to thought. The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. ”

“ It begets in those, [42] who, coming across him in youth, can bear him at all, a habit of reading between the lines, a faith in the effect of concentration and collectedness of mind in the right appreciation of poetry, an expectation of things, in this order, coming to one by means of a right discipline of the temper as well as of the intellect. He meets us with the promise that he has much, and something very peculiar, to give us, if we will follow a certain difficult way, and seems to have the secret of a special and privileged state of mind. ”

“ With what genius have I contrived that all these stratagems shall be conducted within one head where there is no partition, so that it might have been supposed all the thoughts must be known to each other! By this art I am the great author [339] of all serenity of mind, for the chief part of mankind can neither bear to practise virtue nor to live without it; but by this excellent contrivance they are enabled to believe themselves good without the inconvenience of really being so. ”

“ Every one does in fact understand the question ‘Is this good?’ When he thinks of it, his state of mind is different from what it would be, were he asked ‘Is this pleasant, or desired, or approved?’ It has a distinct meaning for him, even though he may not recognise in what respect it is distinct. ”

“ It is in the writings of these illustrious characters that we find originality of thought, justice of sentiment, and force of reasoning, occasionally elevating our conceptions, convincing our judgments, and softening our feelings. Many more examples might be adduced of those who prefer the exercise of composition to that of conversation, and who, in silently meditating upon some rational subject, and in recording the spontaneous flow of ideas and reflections, have felt a silent satisfaction, and an enlargement of mind, never found among the restraints, or the gaieties of society. ”

“ Some truths you have learned, but in the passage through your mind they take the colour and shape of a distorted and embittered fancy. You have a work to do, and influence to do it; but your will must become humble, and then you will learn the sweets of true knowledge, and be able to disseminate truth and wisdom. ”

“ They were meant to know, to act, and to feel—to know everything which the mind is able to contemplate, to name, and to classify; to do everything which the will, prompted by the passions and guided by the conscience, can undertake; and, subject to the same guidance, to feel in its utmost vigor every emotion which the contemplation of the various persons and objects which surround us can excite. ”

“ Is not my essence thought?' 'You ought to know your own essence best,' all creation will reply. 'I am confident,' says one, 'that I never do cease to think,—not even in the soundest sleep.' 'You do, for a long time, every night of your life,' exclaims another, equally confident and equally ignorant. ”

“ Thoughts are things Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts. ”

“ It may be said to comprehend every thing which we perceive, and remember, and imagine, and compare, and admire, all those mysterious processes of thought, which, in the happy efforts of the philosopher and the poet, are concerned in the production of their noblest results, and which are not less deserving of our regard, as they are every moment exercised by all, in the humble intellectual functions of common life. ”

“ To be frank, upon that common ground of decent behaviour, pride and self-respect, health and the heroic habit of thinking, we need for ourselves not so much rules as wisdom, and for others not, indeed, a foolish and indiscriminate toleration but at least patience, arrests of judgment, and the honest endeavour to understand. Now to help the imagination in these judgments, to enlarge and interpret experience, is most certainly one of the functions of literature. ”

“ There is a literature of reasoned thought; but by far the greater part of those writings which we reckon worthy of47 that great name is the product, not of reasoned thought, but of the imagination and of the spiritual vision of those who see,—writings winged, not with knowledge, but with sympathy, with sentiment, with heartiness. Even the literature of reasoned thought gets its life, not from its logic, but from the spirit, the insight, and the inspiration which are the vehicle of its logic. Thought presides, but sentiment has the executive powers; the motive functions belong to feeling. ”

“ Use your wisdom and knowledge today, and use it in a reverent and holy way, with ever a high motive in mind. By so doing, your consciousness shall widen, shall extend out and take in more of this universal knowledge and wisdom.
"Once man has truly taken this step in sincerity, placed it above all else, above all other things, then he will begin to move rapidly on his course. ”

“ But that which par excellence is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from the bare energy of the soul. ”

“ By the side of the intellectual element, by which we estimate our thoughts and actions, there is feeling; that is, the sensibility which modifies the judgment and enlightens the deep thought determining our responsibility. ”

“ Is any better than experience, and wisdom, and reason?
There cannot be a better, he said.
Then, I said, reflect. Of the three individuals, which has the greatest experience of all the pleasures which we enumerated? Has the lover of gain, in learning the nature of essential truth, greater experience of the pleasure of knowledge than the philosopher has of the pleasure of gain? ”

“ I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind. ”

“ For this, wisdom and self-denial and sympathy with the noblest and the best are to be sought, and above all with the One, the Infinite Wisdom revealed in Nature, in the world of thinking beings and in the self-conscious mind. ”

“ Without Knowledge of the Human Nature. “Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,” assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. ”

“ His sentiments, if not indicative of deep thought, are so instinct with the practical common sense on which we pride ourselves, so genial, and, above all, so charmingly expressed, that they are continually recurring to the recollection of every educated mind, and re-appearing in our best authors. ”

“ We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator," etc., etc., etc. ”

“ This wisdom, then—rectitude of soul and of reason, and purity of life—is the object of the desire of philosophy, which is kindly and lovingly disposed towards wisdom, and does everything to attain it. ”

“ Mind as creator appealed to her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. ”

“ Convey the same thoughts by illustrations and experiments, and the child’s mind at once grasps the ideas we desire to convey.
Thoughts are living entities (how poor are words!) which our own souls have given birth to, or created in the intensity of our love, wisdom, or passion. One Eastern adept has taught, “A good thought is perpetuated as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a malignant demon. ”

“ When people are able to understand, not merely how beautiful -'s action was, but why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they should approach me. ”

“ And when the soul has gone toward full-orbed splendor and stands forth clothed with full manhood the sage condenses the wisdom of a thousand volumes into four maxims, "Act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never." ”

“ In the mind of the deep thinker it is moulded into a sublime and living philosophy, and he cannot subsist under its influence without thinking more deeply, and becoming more truly a philosopher than before. ”

“ Well, what I have called contemplative insight, that disposition and power of our minds whereby we study and enjoy truth, expresses itself early and late, as you know, in the form of a searching curiosity about our world and about life, a curiosity to which you in vain endeavor to set bounds. ”

“ Ask any man what he thinks of the world in which he is placed: whether, for example, it is on the whole a scene of happiness or misery, and he will either answer by some cut-and-dried fragments of what was once wisdom, or he will confine himself to a few incoherent details. ”

“ And this is nothing else than Understanding, a faculty of the soul, capable of studying existences,—of distinguishing and comparing what succeeds as like and unlike,—of enjoining and forbidding, and of conjecturing the future. And it extends not to the arts alone, but even to philosophy itself. ”

“ While the mind is abstracted and elevated from sensible matter, distinctly views pure forms, conceives the beauty of ideas, and investigates the harmony of proportions; the manners themselves are sensibly corrected and improved, the affections composed and rectified, the fancy calmed and settled, and the understanding raised and excited to nobler contemplations. ”

“ The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. [148] Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ”

“ What I say is that our present recognition of the concrete things in which we all believe is not a mere acceptance of any content of sense, but does include an intention to act, and does fulfil, as far as it goes, a purpose, and our own conscious purpose. ”

“ In observing these connections, so far as they fall within our own range of experience, we there find somehow our own rational Will better expressed, or embodied, than it would be without this idea, and thereby we better win our own inner clearness. ”

“ I have often put you in mind that, whatever your pretences to experiences, discoveries, comforts and joys have been, at that day every one will be judged according to his works; and then you will find it so. ”

“ It leaves the impression of wisdom that comes from actual experience, dealing with life rather than speculations, and so comes home to the heart and conscience. IT SHOWS A WIDE RANGE OF READING AND CLOSE GRAPPLE WITH THE DIFFICULT PROBLEMS OF OUR TIME. Such preaching is tonic and invigorating. ”

“ But the universal form in which any opinion comes to your consciousness, and gets its definition for your own mind, is this form of an appeal to an insight that is superior in grasp, in unity, in coherence, in reasonableness to your momentary insight. ”

“ The most immediate task which life demands from us in the understanding of ourselves and of others is, therefore, to interpret our ideas, to draw the consequences of our will, to appreciate the attitudes, to measure them by higher standards. ”

“ V THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE [75]
Common sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it is possible to be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made of one kind of substance, and things of another. Consciousness, flowing inside of us in the forms of conception or judgment, or concentrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion, can be directly felt as the spiritual activity which it is, and known in contrast with the space-filling objective ‘content’ which it envelopes and accompanies. ”

“ Let us resume our reflections upon men, their characters, their manners, in a word, our reflections upon the world. They may help you to form yourself, and to know others; a knowledge very useful at all ages, very rare at yours. ”