Of Man, the Organs, the Soul, the Intellectual Faculties
[1] THERE are two existences that a man, prisoned within himself, might know: his own and God’s; I am, therefore God is. But sensation only can teach him the existence of bodies.
[2] We see everything through ourselves. We are a medium always interposed between things and ourselves.
[3] There is, in language, something of fate and inspiration.
[4] The soul is to the eyes what sight is to the touch; it seizes what eludes the senses. As in art the greatest beauty is beyond law, so in knowledge the highest and the truest is beyond experience.
[5] In the soul there is a taste that loves goodness, as in the body there is an appetite that loves pleasure.
[6] The mind is the atmosphere of the soul.
[7] What we call soul in man is unchanging, but what we call mind differs with every age, every situation, every day. The mind is a mobile thing whose direction changes with every wind that blows.
[8] The mind is a fire, of which thought is the flame. Like flame it tends upwards. Men do their best to smother it by turning the point downwards.
[9] Plato is wrong: there are some things that may be communicated, but not taught; some that we may obviously possess without the power of communicating them. Strictly speaking, perhaps, a man is only learned in what can be taught; but he may be gifted with an art which could not be transmitted: such as quickness of grasp, instinct, genius; such as also, perhaps, the art of knowing and governing men.
[10] Our mind has more thoughts than our memory can store; it delivers many judgments of which it could not give the reasons; it sees further than it can reach, it knows more truths than it can explain. A large part of itself could be very usefully employed in searching out the arguments which have determined it, in defining the perceptions which have touched and then escaped it. There is for the soul many a lightning-flash with which she has little to do; they pass over and illuminate her so rapidly that she loses the recollection of them. We should be astonished at the number of things she would be found to have seen, if, in returning upon all that has passed within her, record could be made of it, if only from memory, and by a careful searching out of all the circumstances. We do not hunt enough in ourselves; and like children we neglect what we have in our pockets, and think only of what is in our hands, or before our eyes.
[11] Thought is sudden and springs like flame; ideas are born like day from night, after the dawn; the one dazzles, the other illumines.
[12] Good sense is to know what we must do; intelligence, to know what we must think.
[13] Intellect consists in having many useless thoughts, good sense in being well supplied with necessary notions.
[14] Imagination is the eye of the soul.
[15] It is to imagination that the greatest truths are revealed; for instance, Providence, its course, its designs; they escape our judgment; imagination alone sees them.
[16] Imagination is so necessary both in literature and in life, that even those who have none, and decry it, are obliged to make one for themselves.
Of Minds and Their Nature
[1] THE TRUE worth, quality, and excellence of minds lie rather in their temper and their natural lucidity, than in their amount of force, which is as variable as health.
[2] Minds are measured by their stature; it were better worth while to measure them by their beauty.
[3] Some of the best minds are unappreciated, because there is no recognised measure by which to try them. They are like a precious metal, that has no touchstone.
[4] Every mind has its dregs.
[5] To have a good intelligence and a bad brain—that is fairly common among the delicate spirits.
[6] Oh! ye fat geniuses, despise not the lean!
[7] There is a weakness of body which comes from the strength of the mind, and a weakness of mind which comes from the strength of the body.
[8] A mind has still some strength, so long as it has strength to bewail its feebleness.
[9] All fine natures have the quality of lightness, and as they have wings to rise with, so have they also wings to go astray.
[10] There are some men who are only in full possession of their minds when they are in a good temper, and others only when they are sad.
[11] There are some who can only find activity in repose, and others who can only find repose in movement.
[12] Minds that never rest are greatly prone to go astray.
[13] To occupy ourselves with little things as with great, to be as fit and ready for the one as for the other, is not weakness and littleness, but power and sufficiency.
[14] Those who have denied themselves grave thoughts, are apt to fall into sombre thoughts.
[15] Enlightenment—a great word! Some men think themselves enlightened, because they are decided, taking conviction for truth, and strong conception for intelligence. Others, because they know all that can be said think that they know all truth. But which of us is enlightened by that eternal light that shines as it were from the walls of the brain, and makes forever luminous those minds wherein it enters, and those objects that it has touched!
[16] The man of imagination without learning has wings and no feet. [M.A.]
[17] In some minds there is a nucleus of error, which attracts and assimilates everything to itself.
[18] If men of imagination are sometimes the dupes of appearance, colder intellects are often the dupes of their own reasonings.
[19] It is no use to hold ideas strongly, the important thing is to have strong ideas; that is to say, ideas that contain a great force of truth. Now the truth, and its force depend in no way upon the brain of the man. We call him a strong man who resists all argument, but that is only a strength of attitude. A blunt arrow, launched by a strong hand, may hit hard, because it flies from body to body; but strong lungs and great determination will not give true efficacy to a weak idea loudly expressed, for it is only mind that flies to mind.
[20] The lofty mind finds pleasure in generalities; the weighty mind loves applications.
[21] Questions show the mind’s range, and answers its subtlety.
[MA] - Matthew Arnold
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