Brenda Ueland Thinking Quotations

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.

If we don't act at all (express our imaginings either in work or a changing personality, so that we can learn and think again something better) we certainly rot.

... the spirit, I think, is a stream, a fountain, and must be continually poured out, for only if it is poured out will more and clearer streams come.

we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.

Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me... to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: "Tell me more. This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive."

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.

If you write something and they all tell you it is bad - editors, critics, everybody - think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).

You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.... Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!

... when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. ... Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.

it is when you are really living in the present-working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, that you are living spiritually.

People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.