Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

No man is an Island, entire of it self.

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget.

Affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

Je pense, donc je suis.

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.

The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.

It is an ancient Mariner,

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead.

Intellectuel = celui qui se dédouble.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

And moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored means you have no

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

‘My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.’ ‘You are mistaken,’ said he gently, ‘that is not good company, that is the best.’

Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open.

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.