Mental Exertion Quotes

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.

Thinking is the highest form of leverage.

If physical exercise were combined with mental exertion, the blood would be quickened in its circulation, the action of the heart would be more perfect, impure matter would be thrown off, and new life and vigor would be experienced in every part of the body.

Your brain is cooked when you write hard for three or four hours.

So, baseball is probably more physical of the two mentally.

To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

Learned researches lead to headaches, constipation, and befuddled quarreling.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.

Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.

As an actor, it's exhausting being someone else. It's not physically demanding, but it's mentally demanding, if you do the job the way you should.

Give energy, and mental exertion will always have attraction enough.

Thinking is harder work than hard work.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill.

The physical effort of reading drains some of the pleasure I might take from whatever I'm reading.

To act is easy; to think is hard.

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.

The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.

People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

The fruits of one’s sweat and mental labour are always rewarding