Vernon Howard Quotes

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

Usually my 'a-ha' moments are when I'm not trying to think of how to solve a particular problem.

As I'm writing, certain things become clear to me and certain things begin to feel right and make sense. The pieces start to fall into place.

Being tired isn't anything. What's important is the mind. The body being tired isn't important. You can get over the body being tired by resting for a half-hour or an hour. What's important is whether the mind is tired.

After a day's fishing, I'll know the solution to something or have good ideas that were not accessible before.

I know when I have a problem and have done all I can to figure it, I keep listening in a sort of inside silence 'til something clicks and I feel a right answer.

One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

You've been thinking about something without willing to for a long time...Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer.

It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight.

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

However, the mind has an amazing ability to continue worrying away at a problem all on its own, so that when the "Eureka!" comes it is as mysterious as if it were God speaking.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt illumination, it realizes its victory.

Everything comes to me while I'm sitting on the pot.

Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.

I think better when I'm not sober

Enlightenments, like accidents, happen only to prepared minds.

You can't discover light, by analyzing the dark.

Something happens when your subconscious goes to work... That's why 'Sleep on it' is an adage.

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn't understand before. But there's never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.

The moment you know you know you know.