131 Thought-Provoking Quotes

In a world that continuously bombards us with noise and distractions, it’s remarkable how a few well-chosen words can cut through the chaos and make us pause, reflect, and maybe even inspire us to see things differently. This carefully curated collection of 131 thought-provoking quotes is designed to do just that. Whether you're seeking a moment of introspection, a spark of creativity, or a deeper understanding of life's intricate tapestry, these quotes offer a treasure trove of wisdom and insight. Prepare to dive into a journey of contemplation and discovery that will leave you both enlightened and inspired.

1. “There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

2. “They say you’re meant to live everyday as if it were your last, which I’ve always thought was daft, since no one would ever pay the gas bill if that was the case, but what if it were your first?” - Amy Jenkins

3. “I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.” - Jeanette Winterson

4. “You're only a man! You've not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory!” - Georgette Heyer

5. “Synergy between thoughts and feelings reads the universe like an opened book.” - Toba Beta

6. “I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.” - L.M. Montgomery

7. “The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.” - Vera Nazarian

8. “I shall take the heart. [...] For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.” - L. Frank Baum

9. “Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.” - Scarlett Thomas

10. “Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

11. “I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves - not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?” - Emilie Autumn

12. “It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go. I was in my study writing. I was learning how to go down into myself and salvage bits and pieces of the past. I was learning how to sneak up on the unconscious and how to catch my seemingly random thoughts and fantasies. By closing me out of his world, Bennett had opened all sorts of worlds inside my own head. Gradually I began to realize that none of the subjects I wrote poems about engaged my deepest feelings, that there was a great chasm between what I cared about and what I wrote about. Why? What was I afraid of? Myself, most of all, it seemed."Freedom is an illusion," Bennett would have said and, in a way, I too would have agreed. Sanity, moderation, hard work, stability . . . I believed in them too. But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up? Was it a voice? Or was it a thump? Something even more primitive than speech. A kind of pounding in my gut which I had nicknamed my "hunger-thump." It was as if my stomach thought of itself as a heart. And no matter how I filled it—with men, with books, with food—it refused to be still. Unfillable—that's what I was. Nymphomania of the brain. Starvation of the heart.” - Erica Jong

13. “Everybody has a soul." I turn to Pelly. "And that means you, too." "I'm not so sure of that," he says. "What does it feel like?" "Having a soul?" I look at Maxine, but she only shrugs. "I don't know," I tell Pelly. "I don't have anything to compare it to- you know, what not having a sould would feel like." We fall into a kind of awkward silence. I don't know about the others, but I'm working on what a soul is and not coming up with a whole lot. I mean, I just always thought of it as me- what I feel like being me. But surely Pelly feels like himself, so that means he's got a soul right? But if that's not your soul, then what is? It's weird and not something you really think about, is it?” - Charles deLint

14. “Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.” - Charlotte Brontë

15. “Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the tone of affection, ceased, after a moment, to afford Julien any pleasure, he was astonished at the absence of happiness; finally, in order to feel it, he had recourse to his reason. He saw himself highly esteemed by this girl who was so proud, and never bestowed unrestricted praise; by this line of reasoning he arrived at a gratification of his self-esteem.” - Stendhal

16. “When it comes to books and friends, it is best to have only a few but all good ones.” - Guillaume Musso

17. “The thoughts of othersWere light and fleeting,Of lovers' meetingOr luck or fame.Mine were of trouble,And mine were steady;So I was readyWhen trouble came.” - A.E. Housman

18. “The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.” - Washington Irving

19. “You don't seem mad at all,' she said.But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?” - Paulo Coelho

20. “Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.” - Voltaire

21. “What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it?” - Patricia Highsmith

22. “I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.” - Hermann Hesse

23. “We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” - Santosh Kalwar

24. “For a moment he wondered, again, if he should just give it all up. Perhaps he should go back to Italy, back to his hiding place. What made him think that he could rejoin the world of daylight?But he was tired of living in shadows. He was tired of the darkness, and of the things that lived in it. Most of all, he was tired of being alone.” - L.J. Smith

25. “Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.” - Voltaire

26. “He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.” - Sarah Dessen

27. “she drew me. But not who I see in the mirror. Nia saw the Oscar i keep hidden. And she put him on paper. Nobody sees the real me.” - Pam Bachorz

28. “Our thoughts dictate how we feel; so it is important to recognize that we are as we think we are” - Jeremy Aldana

29. “Thoughts are as simple as the process…a message from the soul; conveyed through the heart; received in the mind” - Jeremy Aldana

30. “...you may be able to sway people's heads. But you can't sway their hearts.” - Sophie Kinsella

31. “If you want victory in your life you must learn to be alone with your own thoughts and cause them to be correct thoughts!” - Sandra Hersey

32. “The thing with thoughts is that they die, like everything else. But almost everything else leaves a trace behind, even if it's a tiny carcass, some proof that it existed. Unless thoughts are spoken or written or sung or acted upon, there's no evidence that they were ever there.” - Adi Alsaid

33. “While she lay there with these old worn thoughts coming obediently into her mind, called there by habit and the familiar quiet of early morning, she was aware that at the back of her mind there was another thought that was not at all stale, but so fresh that it was nearly a feeling, with all a feeling's delicious power to kill thought.” - Stella Gibbons

34. “Paper is more patient than man.” - Anne Frank

35. “What business had I to think of one that never thought of me?” - Anne Brontë

36. “There is no such thing as a secret mind or secret me apart from the Lord.” - Kevin Thoman

37. “Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.” - David Abram

38. “It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.” - Ashly Lorenzana

39. “The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given.” - Thomas Hardy

40. “Det är ett faktum som ingen kan bestrida att hon under hela denna långa tid inte en dag vikit från min sida. Om dagarna har hon ständigt varit i mina tankar. Om nätterna har hon varit i mina drömmar.” - Stig Dagerman

41. “A positive attitude is most easily arrived at through a deliberate and rational analysis of what’s required to manifest unwavering positive thought patterns. First, reflect on the actual, present condition of your mind. In other words, is the mind positive or not? We’ve all met individuals who perceive themselves as positive people but don’t appear as such. Since the mind is both invisible and intangible, it’s therefore easier to see the accurate characteristics of the mind through a person’s words, deeds, and posture. For example, if we say, “It’s absolutely freezing today! I’ll probably catch a cold before the end of the day!” then our words expose a negative attitude. But if we say, “The temperature is very cold” (a simple statement of fact), then our expressions, and therefore attitude, are not negative. Sustaining an alert state in which self-awareness becomes possible gives us a chance to discover the origins of negativity. In doing so, we also have an opportunity to arrive at a state of positiveness, so that our words and deeds are also positive, making others feel comfortable, cheerful, and inspired.” - H.E. Davey

42. “The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart”.” - Robert Murray McCheyne

43. “Living is about capturing the essence of things. I go through my life every day with a vial, a vial wherein can be found precious essential oils of every kind! The priceless, fragrant oils that are the essence of my experiences, my thoughts. I walk inside a different realm from everybody else, in that I am existing in the essence of things; every time there is reason to smile, I hold out my glass vial and capture that drop of oil, that essence, and then I smile. And that is why I have smiled, and so you and I may be smiling at the same time but I am smiling because of that one drop of cherished, treasured oil that I have extracted. When I write, I find no need to memorize an idea, a plot, a sequence of things: no. I must only capture the essence of a feeling or a thought and once I have inhaled that aroma, I know that I have what I need.” - C. JoyBell C.

44. “Our thoughts create our world.” - Stephen Richards

45. “I struggled to think pure thoughts, as Hector sucked out my psyche with his eyes.” - Tahir Shah

46. “Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that - thoughts.” - Allan Lokos

47. “Governments do not create, individuals create. Every invention was once just a thought inside someones head.” - William J Federer

48. “but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers” - John Green

49. “Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.” - Markus Zusak

50. “What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.” - Jodi Picoult

51. “Dziewicza strona, biała. Pierwsza skalana i odrzucona. Wszystkie te marzenia, obietnice: czekanie, aż będę mogła znowu pisać, a potem bolesny, sfuszerowany gwałt na pierwszej kartce.” - Sylvia Plath

52. “If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.” - Blaise Pascal

53. “The most abundant and most precious of things: Thoughts and Dreams, can be found in every corner yet as precious as diamonds.” - StridingDream

54. “He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

55. “I write so the endangered thoughts roaming naked and vulnerable through the misty jungles of my mind aren't slain by the guns of practical living.” - Kim Krizan

56. “Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?” - Sigmund Freud

57. “From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order...” - Mervyn Peake

58. “There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn't. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don't leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.” - Jeanette Winterson

59. “I thought: We are not close enough. I though: He will not hear it. I thought: He will hear it and be out so fast that we will have no chance. I thought: Twenty seconds. I was breathing hard and fast.” - John Green

60. “I thought: This is not good. I though: I am not bad at kissing. Not at bad at all. I thought: I am clearly the greatest kisser in the history of the universe.” - John Green

61. “We left. We did not say: Don't drive, You're drunk. We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset. We did not say: We insist on going with you. We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything-everything-can wait.” - John Green

62. “Love does whatever it does, whenever it wants to do it.” - Camile Souza

63. “The universe is God's son.” - Dejan Stojanovic

64. “Stars are only the rain of the Absolute.” - Dejan Stojanovic

65. “Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.” - Dejan Stojanovic

66. “Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.” - Dejan Stojanovic

67. “Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.” - Dejan Stojanovic

68. “Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.” - Dejan Stojanovic

69. “If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another.” - Dejan Stojanovic

70. “Every thought about death takes a moment of life away.” - Dejan Stojanovic

71. “History will be erased in the universal purgatory.” - Dejan Stojanovic

72. “Dreams are our only geography—our native land.” - Dejan Stojanovic

73. “He had an answer to almost everything and he retired at an early age.” - Dejan Stojanovic

74. “A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.” - Dejan Stojanovic

75. “They will smile, as they always do when they plan a major attack late in the night.” - Dejan Stojanovic

76. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Is that all?” - Dejan Stojanovic

77. “To accomplish the perfect perfection, a little imperfection helps.” - Dejan Stojanovic

78. “Total knowledge is annihilation Of the desire to see, to touch, to feel The world sensed only through senses And immune to the knowledge without feeling.” - Dejan Stojanovic

79. “Everything that looks too perfect is too perfect to be perfect.” - Dejan Stojanovic

80. “We love the imperfect shapes in nature and in the works of art, look for an intentional error as a sign of the golden key and sincerity found in true mastery.” - Dejan Stojanovic

81. “In trying to be perfect, He perfected the art of anonymity, Became imperceptible And arrived nowhere from nowhere.” - Dejan Stojanovic

82. “Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.” - Dejan Stojanovic

83. “Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success We forget the easiness of free beautyLying sad right around the corner, Only an instant removed, Unnoticed and squandered.” - Dejan Stojanovic

84. “Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory.” - Dejan Stojanovic

85. “To write good poems is the secret of brevity.” - Dejan Stojanovic

86. “To go against the grain is the secret of bravery.” - Dejan Stojanovic

87. “Words rich in meaning can be cheap in sound effects.” - Dejan Stojanovic

88. “To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.” - Dejan Stojanovic

89. “When I want to be reminded of stupidity, especially my own, I turn on the TV.” - Dejan Stojanovic

90. “The world is a navy in an empty ocean.” - Dejan Stojanovic

91. “Devil and God – two sides of the same face.” - Dejan Stojanovic

92. “In an endless silence even screams sound silent.” - Dejan Stojanovic

93. “In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.” - Dejan Stojanovic

94. “Heavenly bodies are nests of invisible birds.” - Dejan Stojanovic

95. “Without nothing, everything would be nothing.” - Dejan Stojanovic

96. “From nothing comes everything.” - Dejan Stojanovic

97. “When everything hurries everywhere, nothing goes anywhere.” - Dejan Stojanovic

98. “Digressions are part of harmony, deviations too.” - Dejan Stojanovic

99. “Unfortunately, nothing can protect you from the thoughts in your own head.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

100. “The farther away, the closer the home becomes.” - Dejan Stojanovic

101. “Life into death— Life’s other shape, No rupture, Only crossing.” - Dejan Stojanovic

102. “He knows he will be born again, And start fresh anew.” - Dejan Stojanovic

103. “New Rome will be destroyedBy the attacks of new vandals.God always remains silent.” - Dejan Stojanovic

104. “Life eats life to live.” - Dejan Stojanovic

105. “Death swallows death.” - Dejan Stojanovic

106. “You ask how it is possible to be your own father and son. You should seek answers, although it is better to anticipate some, to be the light and dream.” - Dejan Stojanovic

107. “And this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.” - Dejan Stojanovic

108. “Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.” - Dejan Stojanovic

109. “Through everything I have passed but nowhere I have been.” - Dejan Stojanovic

110. “In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.” - Dejan Stojanovic

111. “In a myriad of ways you tell one truth.” - Dejan Stojanovic

112. “While gazing at myself from yourself, I was beautiful.” - Dejan Stojanovic

113. “They are both spectacular, Life and death.” - Dejan Stojanovic

114. “Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?” - Adyashanti

115. “...finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.” - Paolo Giordano

116. “I had been brought up to be something of an intellectual, but there seemed at the time no connection between my newly formed ideas and the world to which I had returned. Indeed, I did not even recognize my ideas as ideas at all: they seemed to be culled from somewhere else and did not belong to me. I did not know then what I am just beginning to know now: that my ideas were indeed mine, that I had reacted and changed and moved, that I had already analyzed and synthesized, rejecting some thoughts, adopting others, putting yet others away for a while to be thought on. I did not recognize how mentally active an individual I had become, already divorced from the world through my own thoughts, my own perceptions of right and wrong, of honour and justice, of what mattered and what did not. (2007: 117)” - Jean Said Makdisi

117. “A mind is not weighed by its magnitude, but by the dimensions of its thoughts.” - Anthony Liccione

118. “...all kinds of images swim like tropical fish in the bathysphere inside my skull ...” - John Geddes

119. “Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three” - Edith Hamilton

120. “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.” - Georges Duhamel

121. “Not every thought is a candle! Some thoughts can make the world darker!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

122. “You can think all you can but don't publicize all your thoughts” - Bernard Kelvin Clive

123. “Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it--and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together.” - Osho

124. “One of the unique things about the human brain is that it can do only what it thinks it can do. The minute you say, "My memory isn't what it used to be ..." you are actually training your brain to live up to your diminished expectations.Low expectations mean low results.The first rule of super brain is that your brain is always eavesdropping on your thoughts. As it listens, it leans. If you teach it about limitation, your brain will become limited. But what if you do the opposite? What if you teach your brain to be unlimited?” - Deepak Chopra

125. “When we’re not true to our thoughts and not true to the feelings we have deep inside, we find ourselves unhappy. Be courageous enough to align your life with your feelings, desires, and sense of purpose.” - Steve Maraboli

126. “Raven had been shunned and abandoned throughout his life. Friends often came and went without a word or worse, they toyed with his emotions and shared his secrets with those he chose to distrust. His loneliness was inevitable and his secrets were damaging enough. Through all of his largely brief but emotionally involved friendships and infatuations, the depression and the darkness of his past, there had been one place to which he could go for solitude—either in thought or in person—and he never shared the knowledge of its existence or its secrets with anyone. That place dwelled within him even all of these years since the summer when he was nine and all that could ever have gone wrong, did.” - Amanda M. Lyons

127. “With a certain frustration I knew I spoke too soon, too urgently. I wanted to get out of the way the things I knew to say, wanted to say, the things I'd been thinking, all in the hope of moving into the unforeseen.” - Denis Johnson

128. “My brain as the engine, with thoughts trailing to the caboose, on a one-track mind we keep going forward.” - Anthony Liccione

129. “Yeah, right. Instead of watching TV, we'll practice our weird magical powers. Great. What's next? Zooming around on flying carpets?” - Malia Ann Haberman

130. “Do you think peace of mind can be found in holding a grudge… or harboring resentment… or wallowing in thoughts of what could have been? Me neither.” - Steve Maraboli

131. “Ideas and thoughts are like genes...more you keep inside yourself more it multply with same species consuming your whole energy to breed to produce same old ideas and thoughts again and again until it kills you. So, let it be interact with other species..take it out...make reaction with other peoples's thoughts and ideas and produce something new....produce new energy..new thoughts..new perceptions...” - Jagdish Poudel