Quotes about Thoughts

Some of the things you believe were never true. They were someone else's fears. Give yourself a chance to examine your thoughts. Change those that are negative. You are deserving.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.

We should not only refrain from thinking about gratifying our desires but also avoid focusing on not gratifying our desires. The way to deal with temptation is not to grit our teeth and make up our minds that we will not do a certain thing. The key is to fill our minds with other things.

You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.

Next it dawned on him that the former ideas were of the world, the latter God-sent; finally, worldly thoughts began to lose their hold, while heavenly ones grew clearer and dearer.

And the reason the thoughts kept coming back to me was that I kept turning their sin over in my mind. And so I discovered another of God's principles: We can trust God not only for our emotions but also for our thoughts. As I asked Him to renew my mind, He also took away my thoughts.

Our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. What we think shapes who we are.

I've identified four specific kinds of toxic waste that can poison our minds: (1) pessimism, which usually produces chronically negative thoughts; (2) anxiety, which usually manifests as fearful and worried thoughts; (3) bitterness, which pollutes our thinking with discontented and envious thoughts; and (4) criticism, which pumps destructive judgmental thoughts into our minds.

The life we have is a reflection of what we think.

What science is showing us today is what God told us through Solomon almost three thousand years ago: "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7 NKJV). So if both the Bible and modern science teach us that our lives are moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts, then we need to make time for introspection and ask ourselves, "Do I like the direction my thoughts are taking me?

Whatever's on your mind is also on God's heart.

You are not a victim of your thoughts. You have the power through Christ to take them captive. As a result, you will find what you are looking for. You can believe the worst or think the best. You can find reasons to worry or reasons to have faith. You can live pessimistically, or you can possess life-changing faith.