Last Updated on September 6, 2024
Our overstimulated, technology-saturated lives aren’t conducive to deep thought. Think of the insipid films and shows that barely pass for entertainment. They are hostile to anything that resembles serious thought. They fill our lives with too much noise, making meaningful thinking more elusive than it already is.
Most forms of media only distract us; they rarely inspire us to think deeply. Instead, they promote shallow, instinct-driven thinking. Finding comfort in silence and dedicating time for deep thinking can help us reshape our lives.
The Power of Deep Thinking
Deep thinking brings a wealth of benefits. Entertaining deep thoughts can help us understand ourselves better and see life from a different perspective. It enables us to live a meaningful and purposeful life instead of a dull, shallow one. It reduces our stress from all the pressures of life. Not to mention, it increases our confidence and happiness.
Our thoughts influence our actions, words, attitudes, and moods. By nurturing a habit of deep thinking, we can better control how we feel and act. Positive thoughts promote supportive beliefs that enable us to get through the toughest times in life. Meanwhile, negative ones make us more likely to give up in the midst of adversity.
The problem is: no one teaches us how to think. It is a skill we are expected to have.
Deep thinking is a quality of mind achieved by asking the right questions. One major component of it is being able to discern which life experiences and societal events should be enjoyed for its being or examined for self-improvement. To learn to apply the questions of ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ also helps one nurture deep thinking.
Eliminating Distractions
No one can entertain both shallow and deep thoughts at the same time. We either have one or the other. To nurture deep thinking, one must learn how to push out shallow thoughts and make room for deeper ones. Eliminating distractions can help us with this endeavor.
There’s no shortage of distractions in this content-saturated world. TV, Netflix, smartphones, and video games are some of the most consuming distractions that fill our minds with inferior thoughts. For most of us, these take up the physical and mental spaces in our lives.
Due to the widespread availability of technology, it’s also becoming increasingly challenging to experience the joys of solitude and the power of silence. Rather than reflecting and seeking answers from within, we’ve all grown accustomed to seeking immediate answers. After all, Google is more convenient.
Noisy environments and other highly distractive settings hamper deep thinking. Thus, it’s imperative that we find a peaceful and silent spot where our thoughts can unfold freely without the burden of distractions.
Improving Concentration
Concentration is imperative to deep thinking. It might not be the easiest to achieve, but it’s a skill one can master with practice. To focus on a certain train of thought, one has to exert effort and practice patience. Setting aside five minutes of the day can help us improve the way we think.
We must continue to stimulate our brains with thoughts that enrich our knowledge. Some distractions are harder to eliminate than others. One can turn off or lock away a smartphone, but we can’t do it to our own thoughts. But with patience and dedication, we can gradually increase our level of concentration over time.
Pursuing Quality Thoughts
It’s easier to push out shallow, distracting ideas when we actively pursue meaningful food for thought. Filling up our mental space with concepts that inspire us or challenge us can help us retain deep thoughts.
Thus, we should explore ideas that introduce new perspectives about life or shows us a glimpse of the bigger picture. We can use books to draw inspiration from or rekindle our passions. Forging relationships with like-minded people can push us to expand our knowledge.
Try to learn something new each week. Whether it’s a new skill or subject, our minds become stronger as we keep on feeding it with quality thoughts.
If you’re ready to take off your rose-colored glasses, you can use these deep quotes to change the way you see life and the world around you. Reflect on the powerful words of wise men and women and lead a more satisfying life.
Here are 80 powerful deep quotes to help you create a deeper meaning and purpose in life:
Deep Quotes
- “Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” – Elie Wiesel
- “I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.” – Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
- “So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, All the Sad Young Men
- “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.” – Dave Barry
5. “And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.” – Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
- “I know all about how one moment could haunt you for the rest of your life. How it consumes you and every facet of your life.” – Micalea Smeltzer, Rae of Sunshine
- “What are we here for? We are not alive though we are living and we are not in our graves though we are dead.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead
- “She’s kind of a walking poem, she’s this perfect beauty…but at the same time very deep, very smart.” – Johnny Depp
- “You might want someone else to save you, or might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really, not from yourself.” – Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead
- “Don’t get too deep, it leads to over thinking, and over thinking leads to problems that doesn’t even exist in the first place.” – Jayson Engay
- “They call it the drowning instinct. It’s when drowning doesn’t look like drowning.” – Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct
- “You shouldn’t have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer” – Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
- “This pool is a triumph of imagination. That’s how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can’t be done. There’s always a solution, even if it’s weird.” – Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope
- “Sooner or later you must start having a big picture of what your ultimate desire is and how much of that desire is sex truly fulfilling. Having a big picture will unlock mysteries you don’t even know exist yet. In a world that loves breadth, I challenge you to go for depth.” – Lebo Grand
- “It’s your heart. No one else gets a say in that.” – Jay Asher, What Light
- “Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.” – Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
- “It’s just life, Will. It’ll be over before we know it.” – Rachael Lippincott, Five Feet Apart
- “He stirred my soul in the most subtle way and the story between us wrote itself.” – Nikki Rowe
- “The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don’t you agree? Two-thirds of earth’s surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin.” – Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- “A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.” – Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
- “His walk and stare. Was as poisonous as the air after a nuclear bomb.” – Sequence Kye Kenneth Young
- “Confession is good for the soul, they say. I’d imagine this is true. But my sins were too convoluted. And from the little I understand–too damning.” – Kate Karyus Quinn, Another Little Piece
- “Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
- “Some of us manage to think bigger, brighter, deeper thoughts. Some of these thoughts already shape the kind of research we do. Some of them will prove to be right, and our understanding of our home will deepen. Our home, one day, will be less of a mystery to us.”– Tarun Betala
- “You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.” – Mason Cooley
- “I’m the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN’T imaginary.” – Alan Moore, Promethea, Vol. 5
- “You’re a beautiful flower, fall fearlessly.” – Akash S. Bansal, Desires and Destiny
- “Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
- “True kinship takes a warm heart. In essence, it is about being together, deeply honestly. We talk about love so much but we forget that it is something we give rather than get: a way of being.” – Louisa Thomsen Brits, The Book of Hygge
- “I’ve hidden memories in boxes inside my head before. Sometimes it’s the only way to deal with things.” – Alice Feeney, Sometimes I Lie
- “I love you, Julie. I loved you that first moment when I looked across the restaurant and found you. Then you were the loveliest thing I’d ever seen; but now I’ve discovered how much more you are; loyal and courageous and as true as steel. There’s laughter in you and a capacity to love. Julie, Julie, could you learn to love me?” – Emilie Loring
- “Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep…slow…breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands.” – T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise
- “…passing swiftly on toward further darkness, but moving also toward a new sun.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
- “One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest.” – Mary Balogh, Simply Love
- “People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent (Both types are crawling around deep down in the rabbit’s fur!)” – Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
- “Look deep into ‘Nothingness’ and then you will understand the nature of time better.” – Khalid Masood
- “I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.” – Samuel Beckett, Molloy
- “When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.” – Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
- “I hear nothing but the hustle and bustle of the city. Cars with flashing lights zip past me. People talk, some loud, some quiet. I whisper to myself. “This is what it’s like to go unnoticed.” I take in a deep breath and inhale the freezing air. It smells like ice here. Ice and cigarettes.” – Rachel Ellynn M., Mind Weaving
- “A moment of silence is actually a very loud moment.” – Nouf Alfadl
- “Taking risks will teach you deep ocean things that sea shore experiences will never teach you.” – Lebo Grand
- “It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but it was deeper than that. A sense of belonging to a place I never knew I wanted but somehow always needed. It was a home that carried a heartbeat.” – Nikki Rowe
- “The consequences of incompetence in battle are final.” – Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
- “If I look back I’m lost.” – George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
- “We face storms in life. We walk into a storm by our fate. But we come out a changed person.” – Avijeet Das
- “Keep your innocence and ignorance aside, and expose yourself to dangerous situations, and understand the deeper secrets of life.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
- “Look at both the top and bottom of the world to get to know the world well; wander on the surface, but also dive deep! The best way to get to know something is to look at both the visible and the invisible parts of it!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
- “But no one ever bothered to look past his rough exterior, because in reality looks meant more than everyone wanted to admit.” – Cambria Hebert, #Nerd
- “It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling that it is only through being miserable that you can be deep and meaningful.” – Robin Ince, I’m a Joke and So Are You
- “The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.” – Johann Georg Hamann
- “In my heart, there’s only him and me left…I selfishly put everyone else aside and forget them. All that’s left behind is everything he and I shared. For the first time, no one can bother us. The first time where I don’t have any worries and can start to love him again…” – Tong Hua, Bu Bu Jing Xin
- “Loneliness is the fare that you pay to be free.” – Dessa, My Own Devices
- “There comes a point in the sadhana when a sadhak finds himself so deep in his/her ritual, so as to unite with the deity. The worshipper, the worshipped and the prayer all seem to merge into one.” – Anupama Garg, The Tantric Curse
- “Fate is a funny character. She puts obstacles in your path to see what character ye have. Life isn’t fair,life is a test.” – Melissa Francis, Bite Me!
- “The privilege of the living is to misquote the dead.” – Paul Ritchey
- “If you keep your pain within your heart, you stand the risk of creating a deep wound in it. And so you must be able to share your deepest pain with people who are very close to you. The very act of sharing it with them reduces its severity. Sharing the pain in public can magnify it.” – Awdhesh Singh, 31 Ways to Happiness
- “Words live, soul changes homes, body turns into ashes but a rigid society never moves enough to make all happy.” – Suyasha Subedi
- “My personal motto has always been if you’ve already dug yourself a hole too deep to climb out of, you may as well keep digging.” – Katie Henry, Heretics Anonymous
- “I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.” – Vincent van Gogh
- “Souls do not require human language to communicate. They speak with each other through signs, symbols, deep feelings, and poetry!” – Avijeet Das
- “I believe…I believe that if there was a start to this, then there has to be an end.” – Leigh Bardugo, Wonder Woman
- “I miss you in waves and tonight I’m drowning. You left me fending for my life and it feels like you’re the only one who can bring me back to the shore alive.” – Denice Envall
- “Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don’t know, the world feels unlimited.” – Cixin Liu
- “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia”– John Green, Looking for Alaska
- “If you’ve been up all night and cried until you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.” – C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- “It’s easy to look back and see it, and it’s easy to give the advice. But the sad fact is, most people don’t look beneath the surface until it’s too late.” – Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped
- “The warmth of summer, the richness of expansion that creates the perfect environment for a body that wants to feel at least the illusion of warmth on top of its’ old persevering soul that dwells within. This season, I no longer try to reach for that external warmth, but rather pray to find that spark that could light me up from deep inside. I trust my intuition and I know it is near, if only my eyes wouldn’t be blinded by the sun.” – Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache
- “He was not sure what he had been looking for. He only knew that he had not found it.” – Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things
- “The heart is as transparent as the depths of the ocean.” – Meredith T. Taylor
- “It’s better to regret what you did, than regret what you didn’t do.” – William Nolan
- “As the childhood leaves a deep mark in a person’s life, there is a strong influence of childhood in choosing the favourite writer. Say, if someone’s childhood passes amid the village, nature, river etc., then Rabindranath Tagore’s name should appear on top as one of the favourites!” – Md. Ziaul Haque
- “Life as a writer was not what I expected. I knew no other writers. I knew no writing teachers or editors. I had to draw every last bit of strength from the exalted notions I nursed about myself.” – Lee Siegel, The Draw
- “It was like that time on the phone, how I said I was scared you’d forget about me. The way you said that’s a chance you’ll have to take was said with such a deep repressed sadness.” – Dominic Riccitello
- “I am a wicked man…But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “Such is the nature of people: they regret that what was, although it wasn’t even nice, because they are afraid of what will be – the unknown.” – Osyp Nazaruk, Roxelana
- “…that this monster, who is only one in form, has a heart so humane that he should not be persecuted for a deformity which he refrains from rendering more hideous by his actions…” – Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot De Villeneuve
- “A ‘biomass’ man is not deeply analyzing things to draw a meaningful conclusions.” – Sunday Adelaja
- “I said nothing. Deep inside of me, my voice screamed from a hole where I had buried it.” – Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan