Wayward Mind Quotes & Sayings

Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange dark cavern of speculation but at once turned away from it, feeling that it was not yet the hour to enter it. But the nightshade of his friend's listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and he found himself glancing from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up, sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trickling into the very words themselves which set to band and disband themselves in wayward rhythms:
The ivy whines upon the wall
And whines and twines upon the wall
The ivy whines upon the wall
The yellow ivy on the wall
Ivy, ivy up the wall.
Did any one ever hear such drivel? — James Joyce

Yes! all is past - swift time has fled away,
Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;
How long will horror nerve this frame of clay?
I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.
Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,
And yet that may not ever, ever be,
Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;
Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;
Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

She smiled, and there it was again, that aching pressure in his chest. Love, or a heart attack. Kind of the same thing. — Kristan Higgins

The start of sin and destruction, discouragement and darkness, always happened with single thought. He couldn't stop that. Wrong thoughts were like the billboard signs on the highway of life. They were bound to come. Victory or defeat depended on how he handled the thought. "Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." The scripture from 2 Corinthians 10:5 came back to him now, the way it had countless other times. He grabbed the wayward thought and pushed it from his heart and mind. He wouldn't be afraid. Whatever happened ... God was in control. He had nothing to fear. The Lord had worked a miracle to this point. He wasn't finished yet. — Karen Kingsbury

Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. This will mean that all the other boundaries of life, whether they are mental, moral, or spiritual limits, are completely free with the freedom God gives His child; that is, a worshiping child, not a wayward one. A worker who lacks this serious controlling emphasis of concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work. He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind, or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated. There is no freedom and no delight in life at all. His nerves, mind, and heart are so overwhelmed that God's blessing cannot rest on him. — Oswald Chambers

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does. — Jimmy Carter

I was a wayward child, very passionate and very determined. If I made up my mind to do something, there was no stopping me. — Kate Winslet

We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology. — Deepak Chopra

Western science has made nature intelligible in terms of its symmetries and regularities, analyzing its most wayward forms into components of a regular and measurable shape. As a result we tend to see nature and to deal with it as an "order" from which the element of spontaneity has been "screened out." But this order is maya, and the "true suchness" of things has nothing in common with the purely conceptual aridities of perfect squares, circles, or triangles - except by spontaneous accident. Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of of the universe break down. and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a "principle of uncertainty. — Alan W. Watts

There is a classic Zen saying that a wave cannot be separated from the ocean, nor can the ocean be separated from a wave. — David Levy

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. — Anne Lamott

She was in the mood for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of mind. — Thomas Hardy

Jessup said, "Doesn't surprise me somehow. I feel I'm walking out of a wolf den in one piece by the grace of God." He glanced at Anne. "Just what you need to be doing, adding to this family."
"My influence will be gentling."
There were at least three derisive snorts around the room, and Jessup laughed out loud. — Ellen O'Connell

An undisciplined mind is a wasted one, which will be reflected in the life of the one who possesses such a mind. — Stephen Richards

Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind. — Edward Hirsch

I sent people to the penitentiary as fast as I could, never thinking about whether they deserved it. — Joe Jamail

A marriage that isn't built around the Cross will be devoid of grace, mercy, and humility that come when both husband and wife recognize their need for a savior. — John R.W. Stott

All the things that people do in order to show that they don't need anybody ... meanwhile, all they really want to do is say, "Please keep me." We all want to be kept. The problem is we are too afraid to let anyone know about it. What are these fragile things in our hearts that have so much fear of being broken? — C. JoyBell C.

If we want to build the Iraqis' confidence about our intentions in their country, if we want to stop adding fuel to the fire of insurgency and terrorism, we must clarify our intent. — John Conyers

Are you suggesting we eat cursed fruit? Vicious fruit? Attacking fruit? — Merrie Haskell

While total avoidance of the wayward brother is not necessarily instructed, it is the case that contact with the sinning brother or sister should be confined to interaction that would bring to mind the guilty party's sin and constantly urge the impenitent party to return to the fold. — Kyle Butt