Mental Notes Quotes & Sayings

Mental Note #50: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, even though it most desperately wants to. - Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman — Alisa Steinberg

Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. — Anton Chekhov

I'm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills but getting few myself except those I read into men on nights such as these. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm a heaven sent instrument. My rhythmatic regimen navigates melodic notes for your soul and your mental. That's why I'm instrumental, vibrations is what I'm into. — Kanye West

Barbee had always wondered about mental institutions. He thought of taking notes for a feature story on this adventure at Glennhaven, as the evening wore on, began to seem remarkable for utter lack of anything noteworthy. It began to appear as a fragile never-never land, populated with timid souls in continual retreat from the real world outside and even from one another within. — Jack Williamson

Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly. — Rolf Smith

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made. — Cate Blanchett

The notes on the flash drive showed a steady progression into dementia, a deteriorating mental state directly linked to incidents of exposure to Sovereign. There must have been some kind of field generated by the vessel; some kind of radiation or emission. Something that had destroyed and corrupted Qian's mind when he went to study it in person. It had affected Edan, too, though the transformation was more subtle. The batarian had begun acting differently from the moment he first visited the site of the artifact: consorting with humans, risking the wrath of the Spectres. Edan probably hadn't even been aware of the changes, though looking back it was obvious to Saren. — Drew Karpyshyn

She spent the afternoon typing up notes, answering readers' questions, and blogging about a new online source for organic cinnamon and nutmeg, either of which she could have used for testing the island recipe for Indian Pudding that afternoon. Both spices were produced from a tropical evergreen that, Cecily's miracles notwithstanding, did not grow on Quinnipeague, but since Indian pudding was a prized dessert here, Nicole refused to leave it out. Typically, Quinnie Indian Pudding called for cider molasses made from island apples. The recipe she had been given listed bottled molasses, which she supposed made sense, given its wider availability, though the taste wasn't quite the same. She made a mental note to ask Bev Simone about her supply of the real stuff. — Barbara Delinsky

Numerous studies have shown that handwriting notes is simply better for engagement, information retention, and mental health than is writing on digital devices. — David Sax

Richter compares the conditions of rat domestication with those now provided by the 'Welfare State'-ample food, no danger, no stress, uniform environment and climate, and so forth. But he notes that, under these seemingly favorable conditions, organic deterioration has taken place: a decrease in the size of the adrenal glands, which help the organism meet stress or fatigue and forfend certain diseases: while the thyroid gland, the regulator of metabolism, becomes less active. Not strangely, perhaps, the brains of the domestic rat, and perhaps their mental ability, are smaller. At the same time, the sex glands mature earlier, become bigger, show more activity, and result in a higher rate of fertility. How human! — Lewis Mumford

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram. — Jonathan Lethem

Big house, 4 whips, hella tattoos
Smoke good and ya bro think I'm bad news
Bout to go nuts, nigga, Cashews
A bro ask me if I'm book I say I'm past due — Wiz Khalifa

I always tried to learn about the hitters. Anytime someone got a hit off me, I made a mental note of the pitch. He'd never see that one again. — Christy Mathewson

It's not logical that we boast the most advanced and powerful internationally integrated economy in the world, then claim organizational incompetence and poverty when it comes to creating and funding a national health care system for all Americans. — Jesse Jackson Jr.

I made a mental note to write starlings in my "Southern Speak" notebook. I'd already started the second page, thanks to Faye and Bobbie. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. "I try. So, Churchville. Let me see the map."
I followed his directions, asking questions, until he drew a big circle around the funeral home. "That's it right there, just off 42. Or Buffalo Gap Highway. But you might not see any road signs. Out there things are a little...well, less posted. People just sort of know where they are. So look for these things." He drew in some more notes and--I'm not making this up--something like bugs with stick legs.
"What are those?" I asked, not intending to sound rude. "Roaches?"
"Those are cows. There's a pasture here."
"Oh. — Jennifer Rogers Spinola

Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens. — Natasha Trethewey

Just as the divine Redeemer, dying on the Cross, offered Himself as Head of the whole human race to the eternal Father, so also in this "clean oblation" (Mal 1:2), He, as Head of the Church, offers not only Himself but, in Himself, all His mystical members. — Pope Pius XII

[His research into biblical criticism had lead him to the conclusion that most of what was contained in traditional religion simply wasn't true]
Was I to lie in order to teach the truth? ... Was I to repeat these words? It was impossible. It was certain they would stick in my throat. On these grounds the separation was decided by me. — Felix Adler

The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes. — Glenn Gould

o here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I'm in, what I'm in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent body bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow-motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise. That was in my careless youth. Now, fully inverted, not an inch of space to myself, knees crammed against my belly, my thoughts as well as my head are fully engaged. I've no choice, my ear is pressed all day and night against the bloody walls. I listen, make mental notes, and I'm troubled. I'm hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and I'm terrified by what awaits me, by what might draw me in. — Ian McEwan

Never talk to waiters like that," Kit said.
"Can I help it," he said, "if I only went one year to finishing school?"
"It isn't manners," she said like a sensible schoolteacher quietly disciplining a small boy, "it just isn't smart."
I thought of the time I first told him not to say ain't. He took this the same way, a little peeved but making mental notes. I noticed he was never too much of an egotist to take criticism when he knew it would help. It was part of his genius for self-propulsion. I was beginning to see what Kit had for Sammy. Of course she stood for something never within his reach before. But it was more than that. Sammy seemed to know that his career was entering a new cycle where polish paid off. You could almost see him filing off the rough edges against the sharp blade of her mind. — Budd Schulberg

Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I'd allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to fight for things in life, I wanted to fight for something bigger than the right to eat with a fork. I wanted to love and be loved and feel alive. I had no idea how to find my way, but listening to that music wash over me, I felt, for the first time, that the struggle I faced would be worth it. — Eric Nuzum

Nobody actually played tennis in my family. — Novak Djokovic

The twins in the storyline only makes it have more feels. — Rosamund Hodge

Prejudice. It's a bad thing. Once your mind is prejudiced, you will not think beneath or beyond. Actually, you will stop thinking. — Bhavik Sarkhedi

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artifact of your mental illness. — Hilary Mantel

Their love story unfolded and then folded up again in Cambridge, as I watched and took mental notes and learned nothing, naturally, because the heart is unteachable. — Susanna Kaysen

Don't think for one min that I haven't been taking mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone! — LeBron James

If there were a way of putting an end to himself by some purely mental act he would put an end to himself at once, without further ado. His mind is full of stories of people who bring about their end - who methodically pay bills, write goodbye notes, burn old love letters, label keys, and then, once everything is in order, don their Sunday best and swallow down pills they have hoarded for the occasion and settle themselves on their neatly made beds and compose features for oblivion. Heroes all of them, unsung, unlauded. I am resolved not to be of any trouble. — J.M. Coetzee

Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory:where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life. — Evelyn Underhill

I think being Canadian helps you as a journalist in America, because you're sort of on the outside watching this big party going on, and you're sort of taking mental notes as it goes on. I think if you're in the party the whole time, you don't notice it as much. And I think Canadians are very good observers of American culture. — Graydon Carter

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

I awoke on my stomach, naked and tangled in Travis Maddox's sheets. I kept my eyes closed, feeling his fingers caressing my arm and back.
He exhaled with a deep, contented sigh, speaking in a hushed voice. I love you, Abby. I'm going to make you happy, I swear it. — Jamie McGuire

Such was the mistrust of the official line, so heavy was the spin, that with any new piece of information you learned to do a kind of mental arithmetic whereby you divided the information given by the speaker's rank, multiplied by his or her time in-country, and subtracted based on the number of miles the speaker was distant from the fighting.

From The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground — David J. Morris