Food For The Mind Quotes

The study of what is excellent is food for the mind and body. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable. Any description in words, or even any inert picture exists in the mind. But on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you. ~ Walter Lippmann

Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. ~ Rajneesh

Food for the mind is like food for the body: the inputs are never the same as the outputs. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Books can be viewed as food for the mind

Stop reading and your brain can become anemic

Read junk and your thinking can become malnourished

But handle your diet with books well and your life long learning never stops ~ Jonathan Frakes

This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for the mind, when there's so much real writing to be read. ~ John Sladek

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind. ~ George Will

You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life ~ Osho

Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. ~ Jim Rohn

The library is a place of mental diversion, learning, and comfort for anyone who has an intellect. I know of no librarian who when asked for food for the mind will offer a stone. What more could anyone ask? ~ Piers Anthony

The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind. ~ Bertrand Russell

What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It's about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how-because we can't write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That's what has driven me. ~ Walter Isaacson

For most writers, reading is also a very intense experience; they don't read so much as compete. The writer measure's himself against every text he encounters, imagining he could do it better or wishing he had thought of it first. The natural writer would almost always rather be reading, writing, or alone, except of course when he needs to come up for air (that is, for subject matter, food, sex, love, attention). He may be a selfish son of a bitch, he may seem to care more about his work than about the people in his life, he may be a social misfit, a freak, or a smooth operator, but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood. Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people. ~ Betsy Lerner

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction fac ~ Rick Riordan

I never read a book in my life," she said again. She looked at the volume where it lay by the boulder, at Scott, at the book again. She seemed to be having a great deal of trouble getting used to the idea of a man reading a book. "What do you read books for?"
Now he laughed, and she flared up at him, "You laughing at me?"
"Lord, no, ma'am. It's just that nobody ever asked me that before."
He looked at the still water for a moment, thinking. "Tell you what, suppose you had a friend, he knew a whole lot more than you do. He could tell you things about what people are like all over the world, the way they live, everything. And what folks were like a hundred years ago or even a thousand. He could tell you things that make your hair curl, lose you sleep, or things that make you laugh." He looked up at her swiftly, and away. "Or cry."
He kicked a pebble into the water and watched the sunlight break and break, and heal. "More than that. Suppose you had a friend there waiting for you anytime you wanted him, anyplace. He'd give you all he's got or any part of it, whenever you wanted it. And even more, you could shut him up if you didn't feel like listening. Or if he said something you like, you could get him to say it over a hundred times, and he'd never mind."
He pointed at the book. "And all that you can put in your pocket. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

You might think that's selfish of me - and maybe it is - but I am a trained psychologist. No matter how depressed someone is, no matter how deep or unrelenting their pain may seem to be, there's always more to the picture. Situations change. Things get better. The human mind, no matter how stressed, still retains a capacity for joy. ~ D.D. Barant

Even when I'm just sitting at my desk, I have to get up every twenty minutes or so and walk around, walk around, walk around, and then I can go back to the page. I can't just sit there for hours at a time. Language comes out of the body as much as the mind. ~ Paul Auster

They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command
But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. ~ John O'Hara

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I like to write. Sometimes I'm afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don't want to leave it. As a result I'll go for days and days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I'll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that's it. It's strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much. ~ Harper Lee

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes. ~ Tom Robbins

In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand. ~ Bruce Lee

It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I've watched Jamie Oliver 's Food Revolution, he wants better school lunches for children in the US and UK. In NZ, we want Kiwi kids to have school lunches! ~ Metiria Turei

[David] Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda- a lot more- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the two-quart bucket of popcorn, the sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp, and, in time, the Big Mac and the jumbo fries. ~ Michael Pollan

He stared at me, unreadable for a moment. "I've had women try to save me before," he said idly.
"Then that means I'll be yesterday's trash soon on that part of the equation, but we will still be friends."
He smiled with a far truer lift of his cheeks. "Don't be foolish. I told you before. I'd never let you go." He touched my chin, tilting it up toward him. "I could remove the danger, you know. Lock you in a room - a tower - "
"My hair isn't long enough," I said automatically.
"But you would spin me gold. So many things better than gold. Truer." His gaze dropped to my lips. "I would keep you in the finest of materials, handcrafted with only you in mind. The finest paints, in a tower so high that you would have no cares. ~ Anne Zoelle

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind - things that exist only there - and clear out space for yourself: ... by comprehending the scale of the world ... by contemplating infinite time ... by thinking of the speed with which things change - each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Psychotherapy
A long, drawn out process consisting of subtle probings of the human mind, whereby women are blamed for all of Freud's shortcomings. ~ Marc Cooper

Obviously, this isn't my normal life, traveling to cities and talking to journalists. It's fun. It's really fun. I get to stay in a cool hotel and eat good food and meet cool people, but that's not my normal life. It's pretty pedestrian. I have coffee in the morning, I go for a run, and then I write for as long as I possibly can. ~ James Ponsoldt

And who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous, senseless attribute, akin to weakness, perhaps partaking of frenzy - a disease rather than a gift of the mind?
Probably all think it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not feel. All illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it for gold. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely. ~ Lorrie Moore

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately. ~ Edward Weston

something must go within to bring what is within out. Oh yes! You need something within to bring what is within out! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other". ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed amoung advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively. ~ Albert Einstein

N matter how stressed Claire became, the tropical trees and exotic island flowers decorating the lobby always managed to take her breath away and put her mind at ease. Nature had always been a good de-stressor for her coming in close behind having her hand held by Mr. Sam Stewart ~ Carolyn Gibbs

No one keeps himself waiting; and yet the greatest cure for anger is to wait, so that the initial passion it engenders may die down, and the fog that shrouds the mind may subside, or become less thick. ~ Seneca.

I took a few dragging steps toward the locker-room door. 'You're doing something to me that I wouldn't do to a dog,' I mumbled. 'What you're doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You're locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. You're taking my mind away from me. You're condemning me slowly but surely to madness, to being without a mind. It won't happen right away, but sooner or later, in six months or in a year - Well, I guess that's that.'
I fumbled my way out of the locker room and down the passageway outside, guiding myself with one arm along the wall, and past the sergeant's desk and down the steps, and then I was out in the street.
("All At Once, No Alice") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Qhuinn got down on one knee. Just dropped right on to the depiction of an apple tree in full bloom. "I don't have a ring. I don't have anything fancy in my mind or on my tongue." Qhuinn swallowed hard. "I know this is too early, and that it's out of the blue, but I love you and I want us to - " For once in his life, Blay had to agree with the guy - enough with the fucking talking. With a decisive shift of his body, he leaned down and kissed all that conversation right into silence. Then he pulled back and nodded. "Yes. Yes, absolutely, yes ... ~ J.R. Ward

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Snow pressed herself against the cool wall to make sure he didn't see her. When he was out of sight, she peeked again to look at the guard. He was young and very thin. Not much older than she. And he had a family he was feeding on meals that weren't arriving. She looked down at the warm bread and fruit on her breakfast tray.
Her belly was still full from the night before. She could make it until dinner without anything more. Looking both ways to make sure the hall was clear before stepping out of the shadows, Snow walked swiftly toward the guard, her eyes cast downward. The guard looked surprised when she placed her tray at his feet.
"Your Highness," he said, struggling for words. "But that's your meal."
Snow was too shy to speak. Instead, she waved the food away and pushed the tray closer to his boots. With a small nod and smile, she hurried back to the safety of her chambers before anyone could see them conversing and tell the queen, but not before she heard him speak softly.
"Thank you, kind princess. Thank you. ~ Jen Calonita

Life up here may be simple but it's not easy, and it's not for everyone. Water runs out; pipes freeze; engines won't start; it's dark for eighteen, nineteen hours a day, for months. Even longer in the far north. Up here it's about having enough food to eat, and enough heat to stay alive through the winter. It's about survival, and enjoying the company of the people that surround us. It's not about whose house is the biggest, or who has the nicest clothes, or the most money. We support each other because we're all in this together.

"And people either like that way of life or they don't; there's no real in-between. People like Wren and Jonah, they find they can't stay away from it for too long. And people like Susan, well . . . they never warm up to it. They fight the challenges instead of embracing them, or at least learning to adapt to them." Agnes pauses, her mouth open as if weighing whether she should continue. "I don't agree with the choices Wren made where you're concerned, but I know it was never a matter of him not caring about you. And if you want to blame people for not trying, there's plenty of it to go around." Agnes turns to smile at me then. "Or you could focus on the here-and-now, and not on what you can't change. ~ K.A. Tucker

This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative - or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody. ~ Rajneesh

The realization had brought with it a sudden stark insight into another kind of glamour. It was quite a long time ago now, but he saw it quite clearly: how the media and the advertisers had created their own kind of glamour to seduce whole populations into a kind of insanity. Food that was bad for people, drink that turned them into mindless thugs, countless tons of useless rubbish, all dressed up by advertising glamour to appear like things people couldn't live without. And the human race had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, becoming....[c]onsumers of limitless glamour, all of it ultimately worthless. ~ Kate Thompson

Break out to go out:

The birds dare to break the egg shell
It does so in order to get out of that Hell
When it finally succeeds, it'll then fly
To its comfort zone it'll say bye
Are you being confined in a small space
How long will you remain at that place?
Before you can explore more territories,
Break away from the former glories.
Yesterday's excellence is today's average
You must strive to be better age after age
Never accept the available mediocrity
As the only preferable opportunity
Decide to grow from below to hero
And make it a point to vacate level zero
Reach out and arise with power
God's blessings on you, will shower
Agree to grow, never attempt to be slow
Be not afraid. Never doubt. You'll flow
The grace of God will be your guide
Taking you along, side by side. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Growing up spoiled a lot of things. It spoiled the nice game they had when there was nothing to eat in the house. When money gave out and food ran low, Katie and the children pretended they were explorers discovering the North Pole and had been trapped by a blizzard in a cave with just a little food. They had to make it last till help came. Mama divided up what food there was in the cupboard and called it rations and when the children were still hungry after a meal, she'd say, 'Courage, my men, help will come soon.' When some money came in and Mama bought a lot of groceries, she bought a little cake as celebration, and she'd stick a penny flag in it and say, 'We made it, men. We got to the North Pole.'
One day after one of the 'rescues' Francie asked Mama:
'When explorers get hungry and suffer like that, it's for a reason . Something big comes out of it. They discover the North Pole. But what big things comes out of us being hungry like that?'
Katie looked tired all of a sudden. She said something Francie didn't understand at the time. She said, 'You found the catch in it. ~ Betty Smith

As June walked toward me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. Astartling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine a true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me...

By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents drama in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. ~ Anais Nin

The full impact of silver
liquid fire, hot and flowing hit me hard in that place in your belly that doesn't exist for food, but for something else entirely. It exists solely to possess the feeling that it barely held in check right then. I don't know what it was. I don't think it has a name. ~ S.L. Naeole

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy? ~ Arthur Miller

They call me Ricky Fatton. Mind you I've had a lot on my plate recently. I got measured for this suit the other week. They measured my pants, jacket, top to bottom. Bloody hell Ricky you're a Mark F they said, a size up from a marquee. ~ Ricky Hatton

The elements of instruction . . . should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion; for a freeman should be a freeman too in the acquisition of knowledge . . . . Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child (536). ~ Will Durant

To meet someone who really hurts you is to meet a rare and precious treasure. Hold that person in high esteem, and make full use of the opportunity to eradicate your defects and make progress on the path. If you cannot yet feel love and compassion for those who treat you badly, it is a sign that your mind has not been fully transformed and that you need to keep working on it with increased application. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Practicing reflection daily ensures a healthy and invigorating lifestyle for both your mind and body. Your thoughts will be the key to your success. ~ Farshad Asl

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;
but when a beginning is made
when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt
it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more. ~ Jane Austen