Unconscious Quotes - Page 24

• Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

  Agnes Repplier

  Reading, Glasses, Vision

  Agnes Repplier (1898). “Varia”

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• any writer is inevitably going to work with his own anxieties and desires. If the book is any good it has got to have in it the fire of a personal unconscious mind.

  Iris Murdoch

  Book, Fire, Anxiety

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch”, p.127, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• You're always running into people's unconscious.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Running, People, Actors

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• it is a shoe designer's job to be a year ahead of our collective unconscious.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Jobs, Years, Collective Unconscious

  Cynthia Heimel (1994). “Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-bye”

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• In one form or another, conscious or unconscious, we have all become propagandists; integrity alone can keep us truthful.

  Freya Stark

  Integrity, Truthful, Conscious

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Mean, Thinking

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• There is, of course, no joy so great as the cessation of pain; in fact all joy, active or passive, is the cessation of some pain, since it must be the satisfaction of a longing, even perhaps an unconscious longing.

  Ada Leverson

  Pain, Joy, Satisfaction

  Ada Leverson (1962). “The little Ottleys: Love's shadow. Tenterhooks. Love at second sight”

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• The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.

  Carson McCullers

  Struggle, Ideas, Goes On

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.275, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Artist, Creative, Way

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• I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive. ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.

  Ntozake Shange

  Emotional, Ideas, Average

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• Even a small, everyday lie is a clue to the personality and preoccupations of the liar, like a dream or any other confection of the mind, that is half-conscious and half-unconscious, as all creative acts must be.

  Helen McCloy

  Dream, Liars, Lying

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• the unconscious forces that govern accessible memory are the most arbitrary of editors and the absolute masters of our lives.

  Helen McCloy

  Memories, Editors, Arbitrary

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• Applause is an instinctive, unconscious act expressing the sympathy between actors and audience. Just as our art demands more instinct than intellect in its exercise, so we demand of those who watch us an apppreciation of the simple unconscious kind which finds an outlet in clapping rather than the cold intellectual approval which would self-consciously think applause derogatory. I have yet to meet the actor who was sincere in saying that he disliked applause.

  Ellen Terry

  Art, Exercise, Simple

  Dame Ellen Terry (1908). “The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections”

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• Education, fundamentally, is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the unconscious. It must be a developing idea.

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner

  Education, Ideas, Conscious

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• ... of the two kinds of order, the conscious and the unconscious order, only one is real. It's the order in the deep hidden places.

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner

  Real, Order, Two

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1986). “Teacher”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

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• Equality is an unconscious assumption, and if you feel you are treating someone as an equal, then you are not doing it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Equality, Assumption, Feels

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

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• After sex, men fear too much intimacy; they want to separate again. Women want to talk, to continue the merging, melting fusion into one. Postcoital conversations keep the woman's power alive. Through unconscious severance, by falling asleep, the man regains his self.

  Nancy Friday

  Sex, Fall, Men

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• Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Hurt, Pain, Distance

  Patrick Rothfuss (2010). “The Name of the Wind: The Kingkiller Chonicle:”, p.108, Hachette UK

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• Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Imitation, Involuntary

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• Genius is inconsiderate, self-relying, and, like unconscious beauty, without any intention to please.

  Isaac Mayer Wise

  Self, Genius, Intention

  Isaac Mayer Wise (1876). “The Cosmic God: A Fundamental Philosophy in Popular Lectures”

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• Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconscious to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Disappointment, Shadow, Sides

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

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• you cannot make a person believe anything unless that person has already had a conscious or unconscious vision of the same thing; you have no conviction of truth unless you have already apprehended it intuitively.

  Gwethalyn Graham

  Believe, Vision, Belief

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• What Warcollier demonstrated is compatible with what modern cognitive neuroscience has learned about how visual images are constructed by the brain. It implies that telepathic perceptions bubble up into awareness from the unconscious and are probably processed in the brain in the same way that we generate images in dreams. And thus telepathic “images” are far less certain than sensory-driven images and subject to distortion.

  Dean Radin

  Dream, Perception, Brain

  Dean Radin (2009). “Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

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• All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority.

  Herbert Simon

  Exercise, Actors, Action

  Herbert Alexander Simon (1947). “Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization”

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• Operating in an unlit world, the unconscious mind is a brilliant detective.

  Jo Coudert

  Mind, World, Detectives

  Jo Coudert (2003). “Advice from a Failure”, p.30, iUniverse

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