Quotes About Intellect

All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation.

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies,as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect,but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

There is not enough high intellect to be catered to and when most people think of Hiphop they think of low intellect.

Intellect without humanity is not good enough...what the world is suffering from at the present time is not so much an overabundance of intellect as an insufficiency of humanity.

The question now is: Can we understand our stupidity? This is a test of intellect, not of character.

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

For contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

Always consider your intellect to be lacking; otherwise too much faith in it surely leads to error.

The virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs. Now there are three elements in the soul which control action and the attainment of truth: namely, Sensation, Intellect, and Desire. Of these, Sensation never originates action, as is shown by the fact that animals have sensation but are not capable of action.

The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more powerful attractions, to spread such flowers over the regions through which the intellect has already made its progress, as may tempt it to return, and take a second view of things hastily passed over, or negligently regarded.

We know not through our intellect but through our experience.

The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

But nothing is yet clear on the subject of the intellect and the contemplative faculty. However, it seems to be another kind of soul, and this alone admits of being separated, as that which is eternal from that which is perishable, while it is clear from these remarks that the other parts of the soul are not separable, as some assert them to be, though it is obvious that they are conceptually distinct.

Remember, intelligence is not part of the mind. Intellect is, but intelligence is not; hence, the intellectual is full of mind but in life he behaves very unintelligently. He has a certain expertise, he is trained intellectually to, do a certain thing, his mind is functioning like a computer. But life is not one-dimensional, you cannot exhaust it in one expertise; it is multi-dimensional.

Plato compared the intellect to a charioteer guiding the powerful horses of the passions, i.e., he gave it both the power of perception and the power of control.

The intellect of two thousand asses cannot bring forth a single man's thought.

My intellect is a little way upon the wrong side of that narrow boundary-line between sanity and insanity.

Understand that wisdom is higher than intellect and discretion is higher than debating.

God gifted man with intellect so that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget his Maker.

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.

Education is the chief remedy for all those great evils which afflict the country. Education will not only cultivate and improve the intellect of the nation, but will also purify its character.

There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more injurious than ignorance and unawareness.

He alone knows to whom He will reveal Himself under which form. By what path and in what manner He attracts any particular man to Himself with great force is incomprehensible to the human intellect. The Path differs indeed for different pilgrims.

. . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.

It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.

The term "intellect" includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge; as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and the like.

I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.

The being level speaks the language of art, music, color shape and pattern directly -- a language that requires no words -- is not limited by words -- nor does it have the specificity of words and thus cannot be broken onto parts that can be manipulated or analyzed by the intellect. It must be swallowed, whole not parsed, sorted and justified.

People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

Man, as an originator of action, is a union of desire and intellect.

I bow to all the seekers of truth. At the very outset, I have to say that truth is what it is. We cannot change it, we cannot transform it. We cannot compromise with it. It is what it is, it has been what it has been, and it will be what it has been. So it doesn't change. What is needed is that we have to change. So, what is the truth? Truth is that you are not this body, this mind; you are not these emotions, intellect or conditionings. Nor you are ego. So what are you ? You are the pure Spirit.

The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbor; when the great merchant trades he links the four quarters of the globe.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

But who shall parcel out His intellect by geometric rules, Split like a province into round and square?

The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.

Developing a character with genuine depth requires a focus on not just desire but how the character deals with frustration of her desires, as well as her vulnerabilities, her secrets, and especially her contradictions. This development needs to be forged in scenes, the better to employ your intuition rather than your intellect.

One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless.

Everything is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as experience.

For the production of man a different apprenticeship [from forests] was needed to sharpen the wits and quicken the higher manifestations of intellect - a more open veldt country where competition was keener between swiftness and stealth, and where adroitness of thinking played a preponderating role in the preservation of the species.

SETH said: When the intellect is used properly, it thinks of a goal and automatically sets the body in motion toward it, and automatically arouses the other levels of communication unknown to it, so that all forces work together toward the achievement.

Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.

The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye.

In very truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman can have; for it is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, not the clearness of its outline, that determines its operation. We live by faith, and not by sight.