Maria Monk Quotes

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

Much has been written about the life of the mind.

You have to do something when you're lying in bed. So you play with your mind.

He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful.

When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game.

Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.

One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot.

I obtain great satisfaction out of using my intellect.

My brain doesn't like to be quiet.

One of the nice things about books as opposed to television and movies to some extent is it's not a passive entertainment. People really do get involved, and they do create, and they do have their own visions of what different characters look like and what should happen. It's great - it means their brains are working.

What makes me happy is just keeping my brain challenged and stimulated and on its toes.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

I think it's good to stimulate your mind.

I get bored quite easily, so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.

The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

What could be wiser and to give people who can think the leisure in which to do it.

I love poetry. If my mind gets a bit tight or bound up with information or depressed with bad news, I find a good book of poetry is like going to the gym for an hour. My mind just expands.

I try to take moments to get brain food - I read, I listen to talk radio - and fill my own self with learning.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for

For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.

Life is not just eating, drinking, television and cinema...The human mind must be creative, must be self-generating ; it cannot depend on just gadgets to amuse itself.