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1 " Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. "
― Anne Rice , The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)
2 " And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: " I don't know how to espress (sic) myself" - I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: " All the same she was a geological (sic) relation; there is always the respect due to your geology (sic)," I would shrug my shoulders and say: " It is really very good of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Francoise, the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life. "
3 " Those who read books cannot understand the teachings and, what's more, may even go astray. But those who try to observe the things going on in the mind, and always take that which is true in their own minds as their standard, never get muddled. They are able to comprehend suffering, and ultimately will understand Dharma. Then, they will understand the books they read. "
4 " There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. "
― Edgar Allan Poe , The Murders in the Rue Morgue - a C. Auguste Dupin Short Story (C. Auguste Dupin #1)
5 " She'll be a fierce woman, that one. It'll take a hell of a man to love her right. Be like living with a thunderstorm. Same as her mother. A fierce woman. Force of nature. The kind of woman you just hand on for the ride. The most exciting and the most heartbreaking woman you could ever meet. They don't know their own minds most of the time, but their hearts are so damn big it hurts em inside. "
― Brian Doyle , Mink River
6 " The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them. "
― Thornton Wilder , The Bridge of San Luis Rey
7 " Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. "
― Anne Rice
8 " She wanted to ask about the McCaffreys' children, but the question seemed too personal. Westerners were private sorts, in Evangeline's judgment, with more than their share of secrets. " It scares me a little," she confessed. " The idea of being so alone, I mean." June-bug favored her with another smile. " Bein' alone ain't necessarily bad, you know. A person can come to understand herself real well that way. Some folks pass their whole lives without learnin' a thing about their own minds and spirits, but out here, all you've got to do is pay attention. "
9 " Americans were convinced in their own minds that they were very miserable, and those who think so are so. There is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed. Take happy and comfortable people and talk to them with the art of the evil one, and they can soon be made discontented with their government, their rulers, with everything around them, and even with themselves. "
10 " It would be a great advantage to some schoolmasters if they would steal two hours a day from their pupils and give their own minds the benefit of the robbery. "
11 " Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them. "
12 " Evolution is unobservable. It's based on blind faith in a few dry bones and on unreliable dating systems in which the gullible trust. Kids should be allowed to make up their own minds about this issue, and not be censored to 'one side is all we will let you hear.' "
