Thinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & Judgment — Page 3

Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, lines 254–255; Satan speaks the sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place.’ This collection retains normalized modern orthography; the scan-backed 1667 transcription reads forms including ‘in it self’ and ‘Heav’n.’ Character context matters because this is Satan’s argument, not Milton speaking autobiographically.

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. The comparison is part of Ruskin’s discussion of practiced precision in master painters.

Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #19164. Capitalization follows Ruskin’s analytical categories in the lecture.

Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The sentence continues by defining production through serviceable consumption; tagging it to productivity records that critique of raw output rather than equating Ruskin with modern productivity science.

Autobiography, Chapter V; Mill states this within his post-crisis philosophy of pursuing ends beyond happiness itself.

Autobiography, Chapter V; this sentence concludes Mill’s reflection that happiness is better approached indirectly than made the sole object of scrutiny.

Autobiography, Chapter I; Mill reflects critically on his father’s demanding teaching while preserving this principle about intellectual effort.

Autobiography, Chapter V; Mill is describing the intellectual and emotional lessons he drew from his mental crisis and recovery.

Autobiography, Chapter I; Mill describes his father’s method of making him attempt a problem independently before being told the solution.

On Liberty, Chapter III; the sentence appears in Mill’s defense of individuality and the social value of original characters.

On Liberty, Chapter 2; Mill argues for open discussion because opposing views expose weaknesses and sharpen understanding.

On Liberty, Chapter III; Mill describes custom as an enduring opponent of the spirit of liberty, progress and improvement.

On Liberty, Chapter III; Mill contrasts imitation with actively choosing one’s own plan of life.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill contrasts command-and-obedience relations with equal association and states that society in equality is the normal state toward which improving social relations should move.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter I, printed page 3, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill places the burden of proof on restrictions and unequal privilege, stating that the a priori presumption is in favour of freedom and impartiality.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter I, printed page 48, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill argues that if an activity were truly contrary to women’s nature, legal or social prohibition would be superfluous; the sentence belongs to his case for free development and open competition.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter I, printed page 48, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill argues that questions about women’s capacities and vocations should be decided by women’s own experience and use of their faculties rather than imposed in advance by men.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter IV, printed page 179, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill asks readers to estimate another person’s need for independence by considering the value they themselves place on personal independence as an element of happiness.

The Forerunner, “The Two Learned Men”; the line concludes a parable about different explanations of motion and perspective.

The Madman, “My Friend”; the speaker contrasts the visible self with the quieter self that remains inaccessible.

The Madman, parable of the pomegranate; the line closes a dispute among voices imagining different futures.

The Prophet, section “Self-Knowledge.” A man asks Almustafa to speak about self-knowledge, and Almustafa answers with this line before describing the heart’s knowledge and the self as a boundless sea. The represented wording is the 1923 text preserved by Wikisource/Project Gutenberg #58585.

Dream Days, “The Reluctant Dragon,” Project Gutenberg #270. The child narrator and Charlotte are following uncertain tracks in snow and imagining a dragon; the sentence is playful literary narration about imagination and fixed expectations.

Tao Teh King, chapter 47, James Legge translation; the sentence belongs to a passage about knowing without compulsive outward searching.

Tao Teh King, Chapter 15, James Legge translation, Project Gutenberg #216. The next sentence asks how the condition of rest is secured and answers through the gradual relation between movement and rest; the passage belongs to Taoist philosophy, not a clinical relaxation technique.

Tao Teh King, Chapter 71, James Legge translation, Project Gutenberg #216.

My Confession, Leo Wiener translation; the question appears in Tolstoy’s investigation of how finite human life might be related to an infinite reality.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter XII; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In the concluding chapter Tolstoy discusses soldiers, authority, hypnotic social conditioning and moral responsibility, arguing that conscience may be put to sleep without being destroyed.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter XII; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In the concluding chapter Tolstoy locates human freedom in the recognition or rejection of truth already revealed to conscience; the sentence states that freedom lies in this choice.

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter V, “Wool and Water,” printed page 95 / scan leaf 115 in the fully validated 1872 Macmillan first-edition witness on Wikisource. The White Queen calls a memory that only works backwards “a poor sort of memory” while explaining the Looking-Glass world’s comic backwards logic. The line remains fictional character dialogue, not a claim about human memory science.

Common English rendering of a passage in Meditations; wording varies by translation.

Spontaneous Activity in Education, discussion of attention. The surrounding physiological terminology is early-twentieth-century educational psychology and is preserved as historical theory rather than modern clinical evidence.

The Innocents Abroad (1869), Chapter XLVIII. Twain criticizes travel writers who frame rhapsodic pictures and later pilgrims who see through those authors’ eyes and speak with their language instead of observing independently. Verified against the scan-backed 1869 first edition.

What Is Man?, Old Man speaking in the opening dialogue. This collection treats the sentence as a provocative deterministic position inside the dialogue, not as settled psychology.

What Is Man?, Old Man replying to the Young Man’s question about changing an automatic opinion; this is dialogic determinism, not neutral cognitive science.

What Is Man?, opening dialogue between the Old Man and Young Man; this sentence belongs to the Old Man’s deterministic argument about education and outside influence.

The Christian Religion, as Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705), opening section, first-edition Google Books scan, around p. 6 before the p. 7 heading represented in the scan’s contents. The first edition uses period spelling/capitalization (“Women shou’d use their Reason … wou’d”), while the frozen catalog record modernizes those forms. Astell’s argument is explicitly Christian and concerns women’s rational agency in religion; it is not a modern empirical finding.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke; Wollstonecraft frames the pamphlet as a defense of human rights and the liberty of reason.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke, second edition (1790); this sentence follows Wollstonecraft’s refusal to disguise her sentiments behind courtly politeness.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; Wollstonecraft argues that deliberately narrowing women’s education preserves dependence and obedience.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; Wollstonecraft explicitly connects independence of character with the exercise of understanding.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter I; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529, preserving Wollstonecraft’s 1796 travel-letter work. After describing the customary maritime rule against sending out a boat, Wollstonecraft says that “men with common minds seldom break through general rules” while criticizing the captain’s reluctance to depart from convention. This is a first-person travel judgment about a particular situation, not a general empirical claim about ordinary people.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter VII; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. “The contemplation of noble ruins produces a melancholy that exalts the mind” occurs during Wollstonecraft’s visit to a church recess containing long-preserved bodies and her reflections on death, ruins, historical change and mortality. It remains Romantic-era reflective prose rather than a modern psychological finding about melancholy.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “MORAL DISCIPLINE,” beginning on printed page 22, Project Gutenberg #67466. “I wish them to be taught to think” follows Wollstonecraft’s recommendation that children compare similar and different ideas; the sentence continues into the next printed page and remains historical educational reform argument.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “THE BENEFITS WHICH ARISE FROM DISAPPOINTMENTS,” printed page 111, Project Gutenberg #67466. Wollstonecraft says reflection forms habits and fixes principles while opening a religious-moral discussion of disappointment, self-examination and character.

Culture and Anarchy; Arnold distinguishes idle curiosity from the pursuit of intellectual and moral perfection.

Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXXI, ‘That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 06 #3586 / Complete Essays #3600. The sentence appears in Montaigne’s skeptical warning about confidence concerning unknown things and speculative claims about divine purposes.

The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels in Italy, Volume II, Rome, W. G. Waters translation, Project Gutenberg #70839. Montaigne says this after describing how actively he sought out Roman public life; the point is epistemic modesty about what a stranger can really know, not a claim that travel is futile.

The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels in Italy, Volume II, entry for March 6, 1581 during his visit to the Vatican Library, W. G. Waters translation, Project Gutenberg #70839. The sentence follows Montaigne’s surprise that he gained access where the French ambassador had failed; it is first-person journal reflection, not a general law that opportunity always defeats privilege.

Elsie Venner, represented by Project Gutenberg #2696 and corroborated by Gutenberg’s Holmes quotation index. The sentence belongs to nineteenth-century literary and medical-philosophical discourse; it is not current psychiatric guidance, diagnosis or a clinically validated rule.

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” first published in The Chameleon in 1894.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I; Algernon Moncrieff. Exact catalog wording is preserved in the scan-backed Samuel French acting text on Wikisource, scan leaf 14 / printed page 12. The acting-text witness is abridged elsewhere, so this record is bound only to its independently verified page.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 17; Lord Henry answers the Duchess of Monmouth’s question “What are you?” with “To define is to limit.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; part of Wilde’s warning about reading beneath artistic surfaces.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; Wilde distinguishes different ways readers and viewers respond to beauty.

The Soul of Man under Socialism; Wilde defends individual thought while criticizing social pressure that mistakes conformity for moral virtue.

The Art of Money Getting, economy discussion; Project Gutenberg #8581. The sentence follows Barnum’s warning about trying to appear richer than one is.

Final Causes, Book I, Chapter I, “The Principle,” opening sentence, William Affleck translation (1878). The represented public-domain scan prints the sentence on p. 17 after Robert Flint’s prefatory matter. Janet begins by denying that finality functions as an automatic a priori principle like causality; this remains nineteenth-century philosophical teleology rather than current scientific consensus.

Plato, Apology, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1656. Socrates says this after examining a politician whom others considered wise; the wording is dialogue speech attributed to Socrates within Plato’s work, not a claim that Socrates knew literally nothing.

Apology 38a; wording varies by translation.

Laws, Book V, Benjamin Jowett English translation. Explicit excerpt: an ellipsis omits the intervening phrase about domestic economy, politics and the arts; the surrounding passage praises arithmetic while warning against separating skill from moral aims.

Phaedo, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates asks the question during the dialogue’s argument about visible bodies and the unseen soul.

Phaedo, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates is reasoning with Cebes about visibility, mortality and the proposed nature of soul and body.

Symposium, Diotima’s ascent toward beauty as recounted by Socrates, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. This is one stage in an ancient philosophical account of beauty and love, not a modern psychological ranking of attractiveness.

Symposium, Socrates recounting Diotima’s teaching, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. Diotima is a reported speaker within the dialogue; the passage is philosophical argument about ignorance and desire for wisdom.

The Republic, Book V; Socrates places opinion between knowledge and ignorance in the argument about what each apprehends.

Plato, The Republic, Book I, around 344e, Socrates in dialogue with Thrasymachus. Wording verified in Benjamin Jowett, third edition (1888), transcribed in Gutenberg #55201. This is dialogue speech following Thrasymachus’s defence of injustice, not the translator’s prefatory analysis. Edition-specific wording must be preserved.

Plato, The Republic, Book IV, approximately 441e–442a; Socrates addressing Glaucon while contrasting the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul. Exact sentence from Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1497, Book IV main dialogue (not introductory editorial matter). The premise belongs to an ancient account of the soul and remains open to philosophical interpretation; not clinical or neuroscientific evidence.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 8, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

Essay “Self-Reliance”; Emerson criticizes rigid adherence to past opinions when fresh judgment requires revision.

The American Scholar; Emerson argues that books should awaken independent thought rather than replace it.

The American Scholar; Emerson contrasts creative reading with allowing past books to pull a person away from an independent intellectual orbit.

In Tune with the Infinite, Prelude; Project Gutenberg #23559. The sentence belongs to Trine’s philosophical New Thought contrast between optimist and pessimist and should not be treated as a clinical definition.

Field and Hedgerow, in the essay “Hours of Spring”; Project Gutenberg #7030. The book was collected posthumously by Jefferies’s widow, so individual essays may predate the 1889 volume.

Field and Hedgerow; Project Gutenberg #7030. The sentence occurs in a recollection of John Brown after his death and is kept in that personal-memory context rather than generalized into abstract grief advice.

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature,” represented by the 1905 Chatto & Windus edition in Project Gutenberg #492. The collection is posthumous; the excerpt concerns literary aesthetics.

When William Came, represented by Project Gutenberg #14540 from the 1914 John Lane edition. This is the narrator’s satirical aside about Herr von Kwarl; the digestion comparison is literary humor, not medical or psychological advice.

The Idler, No. 90; Johnson is discussing gesture and public speaking, not asserting that every inherited custom should remain untouched.

The Idler, No. 88; the surrounding paragraph concerns private hopes, proposed tasks and the gap between imagined achievement and lived action.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “And pause awhile from Learning to be wise” turns from the ambitious student’s pursuit of knowledge toward Johnson’s satirical warning that learning does not by itself remove grief, danger or error. This is eighteenth-century moral-satirical poetry after Juvenal, not a modern educational rule.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles applies the chapter’s labour argument to intellectual and creative production, listing study, observation, research and diligent elaboration as the work behind useful and beautiful thought.

On the Shortness of Life, Chapter III; Seneca’s imagined reckoning of an older person’s years.

The Art of War, Chapter III “Attack by Stratagem,” section 18, Lionel Giles translation (1910), beginning on printed page 24 / scan leaf 80 and continuing onto printed page 25 / scan leaf 81 in the original Giles edition on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #17405. The enemy/self-knowledge sentence closes Chapter III’s discussion of conditions for victory and remains translation-mediated military strategy rather than a modern psychological or self-help claim.

The Art of War, Chapter I 'Laying Plans,' section 18, Lionel Giles translation (1910), original scan leaf 62. 'All warfare is based on deception' begins Giles's section 18 before the examples of seeming unable, inactive, near or far. This remains translation-mediated ancient military strategy, not generic business, relationship or current operational advice.

Dhammapada 63, Chapter V, “The Fool,” F. Max Müller translation, Project Gutenberg #2017. The verse belongs to a Buddhist canonical collection and remains a textual source voice rather than a modern individual-author quotation.

Dhammapada 36 in F. Max Müller’s public-domain translation; the verse follows immediately after the teaching that a tamed mind brings happiness.

Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. I “The Present Time”; Project Gutenberg #1140. The excerpt completes Carlyle’s sentence about knowing the present time and what it bids people do; the local political context remains essential.

Sartor Resartus, Book II, Chapter IX, “The Everlasting Yea,” printed page 156 / Wikisource scan leaf 188 in The Works of Thomas Carlyle, Centenary Edition, Vol. I (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896). “Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action” appears inside Teufelsdröckh’s spiritual conversion and Carlyle’s claim that conviction becomes meaningful through conduct. This collection preserves the fictional-philosophical voice and religious setting rather than presenting the line as uncomplicated Carlyle autobiography or a modern psychological rule.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, from the autobiographical narrative first published in the London Magazine in 1821 and represented by Project Gutenberg #2040. The passage belongs to De Quincey’s historical life-writing around opium use and suffering; it is not medical guidance about addiction or trauma.

The English Mail-Coach, represented by Project Gutenberg #6359 in the volume The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc. The sentence follows the near-collision / dream-fugue sequence and is highly literary first-person prose, not an objective report of measured time.

“An August Midnight,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The line is poetic speculation about nonhuman knowledge rather than a scientific claim about insect cognition.

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented opening sentence is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine argues that familiarity can make a wrong practice appear right before public argument unsettles the custom.

Rights of Man, Part I, Conclusion; represented from Moncure Daniel Conway’s public-domain Project Gutenberg #3742 collection. The passage attributes national hostility to old systems of government rather than to an inevitable enmity between people.

Rights of Man, Part II; the surrounding passage attributes much ordinary social coordination to society itself.

Rights of Man, Part II; historical political argument about representative government and the rule of law.

Rights of Man; this sentence precedes Paine’s well-known cosmopolitan statement about country and doing good.

Rights of Man; represented in the public-domain Conway edition and kept in the work’s polemical political context.

Rights of Man; Paine’s constitutional argument is preserved as historical political theory rather than converted into generic motivation.

The Age of Reason, Part I, Chapter I, “The Author’s Profession of Faith”; Moncure Daniel Conway collected/edited text represented by Project Gutenberg #3743 and cross-checked against Wikisource. “It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself” introduces Paine’s argument that infidelity consists in professing a belief one does not actually hold. It remains historical moral/religious argument about conscience and sincerity rather than modern clinical guidance about happiness.

Darkwater, essay “Of Beauty and Death.” The preceding sentence says that simply wanting to be oneself can be inconceivable to “the average worshiper of the majority”; the line is about individuality amid racialized conformity pressures.