Collecting Thoughts Quotes & Sayings

The discovery that modified speech can drive neuroplasticity in the mature brain is just the most dramatic example (so far) of how sensory stimuli can rewire neuronal circuits. In fact, soon after Merzenich and Tallal published their results, other scientists began collecting data showing that, as in my own studies of OCD patients, brain changes do not require changes in either the quantity or the quality of sensory input. To the contrary: the brain could change even if all patients did was use mindfulness to respond to their thoughts differently. Applied mindfulness could change neuronal circuitry. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

For Arthur, words gathered in waterfall thoughts that spilled off the page into the pools of imaginaton collecting in his head. — Christopher Scotton

The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information. — Jorge Luis Borges

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. — Steve Martin

Singing at the Edge of Need by Susan Laughter Meyers (fragment)
Three things I turned my back to: light,
the past, the trunk of an old tree.
One by one each unfastened itself.
To sit is to present when the roll is called.
I knew that. I wore my hat of straw, fringed
like fingers sifting a breeze. My hat
collecting a thousand thoughts ...
... I had no map
and few lessons yet to guide me.
I was a study of questions. O Grandmother,
I was small, sitting in the midst of wildness,
a child thrilling at the boss of thunder.
A rustle of leaves, moss tipping at me-
I was small, I was hunger, I was thirst-
wings flitting in a brush pile. O Grandmother,
I was small, kneeling in the midst of wonder,
quaking and singing at the edge of need. — Susan Laughter Meyers

Phrantzes considered for a moment, collecting his thoughts like a general rallying his surviving troops after a massacre. — K.J. Parker

The president finally explained why he sat in that classroom on 9/11 for 7 minutes after he was told the country was under attack. He said he was 'collecting his thoughts.' What a time to start a new hobby.' — Bill Maher