Private Thoughts Quotes

In my work, I see couples who no longer wait for an invitation into their partner's interiority, but instead demand admittance, as if they are entitled to unrestricted access into the private thoughts of their loved ones ~ Esther Perel

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy. ~ Bertrand Russell

so the knowledge of their presence remained, for the time being, strictly within the bounds of people's private thoughts, lying dormant in a corner of their minds like a secret language spoken only at home. ~ Orhan Pamuk

They sat in an awkward, embarrassed silence for a moment, the way Englishmen are apt to do after sharing private thoughts. ~ Daniel Silva

I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me - to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like, when I woke up in the morning and Jenny was there. Still there. I'm sorry, embarrassed even, but I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to. ~ Erich Segal

Last night, in the evening darkness of the tent, he had pulled this gift from his packs and looked down at it, feeling its weight in his hands. Once or twice before, he had thought about this moment. In his most private thoughts, he'd imagined it happening with the two of them alone together. ~ C.S. Pacat

Her eyes burrow into my forehead like greedy grubs that want to feed off my private thoughts. ~ Emlyn Chand

Even as he said my most private thoughts, even as I burned with outrage and shame, I trembled at the grip still on my mind. Rhysand turned to the High Lord. "I'm curious: Why did she wonder if it would feel good to have you bite her breast the way you bit her neck?"
"Let. Her. Go." Tamlin's face was twisted with such feral rage that it struck a different, deeper chord of terror in me. ~ Sarah J. Maas

It is part of the trivialization of politics that we give endless attention to the inner life of the politician - his private thoughts, his inner demons - at the expense of his outer life. ~ Charles Krauthammer

She believed in God for the same reason anybody does: it is unbearable to think that our private thoughts are truly private. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

I'd been listening to African-American music since the first record I ever bought, which was by Sam Cooke. And it sounds more like my private thoughts that I never thought I would be able to articulate - I never thought I would be able to express publicly. ~ David Toop

Your journey to capture her soul is one of patience and persistence as it lives in the hidden recess of her heart it is buried in her conscience and holds the key to her most private thoughts and hidden desires the journey is one of understanding and love, not any one can travel there as it is guarded by the heartbreaks of her past and hidden the sea of sorrow and regret.
- Richard M Knittle Jr. ~ Richard M. Knittle Jr.

But little girls need to have private thoughts, too, so I didn't ask... ~ Leslie C. Youngblood

The smile, the look, tugged at Eleanor's heart. Even in the fleeting glance, she'd seen great love in Ian's eyes, his determination to finish this letter and send it to Beth so she could enjoy decoding it. A way to tell her sweet nothings that no one else could understand. Private thoughts, shared between husband and wife. ~ Jennifer Ashley

Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth. ~ Michael Finkel

When you're struggling to survive, no one gets to label you a coward, not even you yourself in your private thoughts. ~ Sara Paretsky

Unpublished.




What if I, revealed these feelings
private pieces, cast… at stranger's eyes
exposing sober thought, and truth
as sentiments, lie deep
interred, inside of me… should they come alive?

Unconsciously
to never share, that essence... safe, in mind

Restlessness wordplay, stills me
I was born… unsettled

Through my rage, of self-indulgence
all… those chosen things, I hide
deep and unexposed
stay inconsolable… within the inside ~ Bev Flynn

So shiny was bad and 'too sad' was bad, and 'too joyous' was bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything; also nit thinking, least not at the top level, which was why everybody kept their private thoughts safe and sound in those recesses underneath. ~ Anna Burns

He said, You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it. ~ China Mieville

Generally, if people write to you, it's because they liked the book, although I have had a few messages telling me what a terrible person I am. But even when they're nice, it's still odd and uncomfortable-someone telling you their reaction to your private thoughts, like reading someone's opinion on your diary. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that feeling, however long I write. ~ Ruth Ware

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Any human being has private thoughts. ~ Alan Dershowitz

The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time. The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and time-pieces. There's thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. ~ Terry Pratchett

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts ... ~ Dodie Smith

Life is better without the walls, everyone agrees. Still, sometimes I'm afraid of the outside world, and every so often in my private thoughts I wish the walls were still there to protect me. It feels like growing up, as if the safety of the childhood has been stripped away, and I've woken up on the edge of something dangerous. The walls are gone and I can do as I please. It's a freedom I'm not so sure I'm ready for. ~ Patrick Carman

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. ~ Alan W. Watts

If I tell these private thoughts of mine, it is because I know they are not mine alone, and that practically everyone is trying to say the same things and that the writer is only a man who says out loud what other people think or whisper. ~ Eugene Ionesco

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary. Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana's world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn't the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander's name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it. Alexander. ~ Paullina Simons

Without private thoughts and actions, we can never truly be free. ~ John Twelve Hawks

To read Salinger is to engage in an act of such intimacy that it, at times, makes you uncomfortable. In Salinger, characters don't sit around contemplating suicide. They pick up guns and shoot themselves in the head. All through that weekend, even as I ripped through his entire oeuvre, I kept having to put the books down and breathe. He shows us his characters at their most bald, bares their most private thoughts, most telling actions. It's almost too much. Almost. ~ Joanna Rakoff

But the test happens, whether we make it formal or not. We ask and you answer. We seek a human response. But more than that - you are my test, Elefsis. Every minute I fail and imagine in my private thoughts the process for deleting you from my body and running this place with a simple automation routine which would never cover itself with flowers. Every minute I pass it, and teach you something new instead. Every minute I fail and hide things from you. Every minute I pass and show you how close we can be, with your light passing into me in a lake out of time. So close there might be no difference at all between us. Our test never ends. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and timepieces. There's thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once. It is a complete FM waveband- and some of those stations aren't reputable, they're outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with limbic lyrics. ~ Terry Pratchett

The monologue of an isolated person who allows the threads of private thoughts to surface in letters and conversations, even in conversations with strangers. ~ Julia Blackburn

Your private thoughts give birth to your public acts. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around! ~ Michel De Montaigne

I am not Hamlet. I don't play a role anymore. My words have nothing more to tell me. My thoughts suck the blood out of the images. My drama is cancelled. Behind me the set is being built. By people my drama doesn't interest, for people it doesn't concern. It doesn't interest me anymore either. I won't play along anymore. ~ Heiner Müller

Most of the time, I do not want to die. But I would like to have the means of death within my grasp. I want to feel the luxury of choice, to know the answer to "How do I bear this?" need not always be "Endure. ~ Anna Lyndsey

One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in the wilderness.
And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That's when you realize that most of it - life, the relentless mechanism of existing - isn't about you. It doesn't include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you've jumped the edge. Even after you're dead. ~ Lauren Oliver

Speak to me as to thy thinking
As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
The worst of words ... ~ William Shakespeare

For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye. ~ Chelsea Clinton

I went public too soon. Stay private as long as you can. ~ Bill Gates

When you know you are going down and dying slowly and taken your whole family with you; that is what really scares me... ~ John Zea

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life ~ Eric Hoffer

If you're not doing what you want to do. However, you still think about it every day. This means you have not given up. Only you know what action will make it happen and thought is an action. Keep focusing on what you want to do and figure out how to turn your thoughts into reality ... ~ James A. Murphy

Linden is my thoughts, my air, my earth. Linden is starting to become more than everything to me. I might be going a little bit crazy but I'm pretty sure that's what someone might call falling in love. A fall into madness. Splat. That's going to be me. ~ Karina Halle

I am a Christian. I haven't really talked about that before. It is something very private. But I do pray and my beliefs are very important to me. ~ Christina Ricci

The greatest blessings require that we immerse ourselves in our Father's words. To have the scriptures nearby and yet turn to other resources for solace and power is an enormous loss. For those who know better, it is a foolish error. "How could a person possibly become what his is not thinking?" asked Spencer W. Kimball. It's amazing what happens within us when we turn on the inside lights. To regularly immerse our minds in the thoughts of God himself is to make a wise investment in our personal growth. Scripture study prepares us for personal inspiration by training the heart. ~ Wayne E. Brickey

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. ~ William Wordsworth

Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The months passed away. Slowly a great fear came over Viola, a fear that would hardly ever leave her. For every month at the full moon, whether she would or no, she found herself driven to the maze, through its mysterious walks into that strange dancing-room. And when she was there the music began once more, and once more she danced most deliciously for the moon to see. The second time that this happened she had merely thought that it was a recurrence of her own whim, and that the music was but a trick that the imagination had chosen to repeat. The third time frightened her, and she knew that the force that sways the tides had strange power over her. The fear grew as the year fell, for each month the music went on for a longer time - each month some of the pleasure had gone from the dance. On bitter nights in winter the moon called her and she came, when the breath was vapor, and the trees that circled her dancing-room were black, bare skeletons, and the frost was cruel. She dared not tell anyone, and yet it was with difficulty that she kept her secret. Somehow chance seemed to favor her, and she always found a way to return from her midnight dance to her own room without being observed. Each month the summons seemed to be more imperious and urgent. Once when she was alone on her knees before the lighted altar in the private chapel of the palace she suddenly felt that the words of the familiar Latin prayer had gone from her memory. She rose to her feet, she sobbed bitterly, b ~ Barry Pain

Ah Sook was very fond of Anna, and he believed that she was fond of him also. He knew, however, that the intimacy that they enjoyed together was less a togetherness than it was a shared isolation - for there is no relationship as private as that between the addict and his drug, and they both felt that isolation very keenly. ~ Eleanor Catton

I have hair that drifts like seaweed when I swim. I have eyes that shine like rock pools. My ears are like scallop shells. The ripples on my skin are like the ripples on the sand when the tide has turned back again. At night I gleam and glow like sea beneath the stars and moon. Thoughts dart and dance inside like little minnows in the shallows. They race and flash like mackerel farther out. My wonderings roll in the deep like sails. Dreams dive each night into the dark like dolphins do and break out happy and free into the morning light. These are the things I know about myself and that I see when I look in the rock pools at myself. ~ David Almond

I'm a very shy person towards my intimacy and private life. ~ Charlotte Gainsbourg

[T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state - what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations - what we can call civil society ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force. ~ Ed Crane

However, in a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible. ~ Richard Hofstadter

When you sweeten your knowledge and experience with your thoughts, it becomes your wisdom. ~ Debasish Mridha

Life externalizes at the level of our thought. ~ Ernest Holmes

To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious. ~ Thomas Traherne

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me ... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud ... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank ... ~ Gustave Flaubert

I'd spent so much of my finite time on earth thinking small thoughts, feeling small feelings, walking under doors into unoccupied rooms. How many hours did I spend online, re-watching inane videos, scrutinising listings for houses I would never buy, clicking over to check for hasty e-mails from people I didn't care about? How much of myself, how many words, feelings, and actions, had I forcefully contained? I'd angled myself away from myself, by a fraction of a degree, but after so many years, finding my way back to myself required a plane. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

For years I have been accused of making snap judgments. Honestly, this is not the case because I am a profound military student and the thoughts I express, perhaps too flippantly, are the result of years of thought and study. ~ George S. Patton

(Sookie's Thoughts on Debbie Pelt) she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and - oh - tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair. ~ Charlaine Harris

My Pen is my thoughts ~ Kelz G.

Joy takes away from us the thoughts of our actions; sorrow it is that awakens the soul. ~ Margaret Of Valois

In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. ~ Foundation For Inner Peace

Shame to him whose cruel striking, kills for thoughts of his own liking. ~ William Shakespeare

i began to see that i had commodified myself.... i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. ~ Fred Turner

I was too unsettled. Too full. Full of dark thoughts, dark musing, as if I'd eaten them for dinner instead of the roasted duck, and they were sitting undigested in my stomach, waiting to be vomited back up at the wrong time. The threat of it hung over my mind like nausea. ~ Kate Avery Ellison

The only person who determines the thoughts you choose to believe about yourself, is you. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

by having all those cruel thoughts i have made the thought of living a good one ~ Meradi Abd Errahmane

Oh God, forgive me for the hateful thoughts, because I love them, these brutal, disarming bastards, I love them … ~ E.R. Braithwaite

I always feel bad when I meet celebrities and I can just tell every single thing about their personal life, I just say, "Well, they don't have friends. Or a therapist." Once you have both, you don't have to share everything with people, because then you don't have a private life, and then you're, I guess, a workaholic. ~ John Waters

You can recovery from any injury. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ...
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive break ~ Hakim Bey

She realized that Rowan saw each of those thoughts and more as he reached into his tunic and pulled out a dagger. Her dagger. He extended it to her, it's long blade gleaming as if he'd been secretly polishing and caring for it these months.
And when she grasped the dagger, it's weight lighter than she remembered, Rowan looked into her eyes, into her very core of her, and said, 'Fireheart'. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I was woken by a shell-burst in the trench of sleep. Heart skipping, with eyes fighting light, my thoughts sprang up like a field of starlings startled by a farmer's gunshot, a thousand separate, autonomous specks that swirled into a single united black shape. ~ Will Wiles

It's quite simple," she says, while Rosentreter wonders, not without anxiety, whether she can read his thoughts. "You draw air into your lungs, you raise your soft palate, air passes over your vocal cords, and you move your lips and tongue. Or, to put it another way, you speak. ~ Juli Zeh

Fourth, you learn how to distract yourself from depressing thoughts. ~ Martin E.P. Seligman

We should not content ourselves with a God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures. That kind of God will not leave us, unless we ourselves choose to turn away from him. ~ Meister Eckhart

When public and private sectors combine intellectual and other resources, more can be achieved. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye. ~ Toni Morrison

You're writing every moment in your mind but not putting it down on paper. Write your thoughts; it will be beautiful. ~ Debasish Mridha