The primacy of Will over Mind

[539] There is a universal and essential difference between acts of will and all others.

The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not because it creates belief, but because things are true or false according to the aspect by which we judge them. When the will likes one aspect more than another, it deflects the mind from considering the qualities of the one it does not care to see. Thus the mind, keeping in step with the will, remains looking at the aspect preferred by the will and so judges by what it sees there.

Blaise Pascal - Pensées 

[  Schopenhauer approves 😀  ]

There are two kinds of minds

With the two types of views there are two kinds of minds. As human beings, we all have what we could call ordinary minds - the mind that you’ve always assumed you’ve had. It’s calculating mind, a discriminating mind, a fragmented mind. It’s the mind of ordinary consciousness, the mind of self and other. We generally think of it as ‘my mind’.
     But there’s another mind that is unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned. Unlike ‘your mind’, it’s unbound, for there is nothing beyond it. To this Mind, there is no ‘other mind’.
     This Mind is nothing other than the Whole. It’s simply thus, the fabric of the world itself - the ongoing arising and falling away that are matter, energy, and events.
     This Mind is self-evident - it’s always switched on, so to speak. We can - and, in fact, we do - see It in every moment. If we would only refrain from stirring our minds and let our conceptualizing die down, like the ripples on a pond after the stirring wind has ceased, we would realize - we would know   - Mind directly.
     All we ever find is the arising and ceasing of the world as it has come to be now. When you snap your fingers it’s already gone. All that persists is thus. Thus is not an object of mind but Mind Itself. There is only this eternal arising and ceasing - but there’s no thing that comes or goes. This is our actual experience from moment to moment. If we would just see, just rely on perception alone, we’d see the ongoing arising and ceasing of the world as it has come to be now - and all our confusion about the nature of existence would vanish instantly.

Steve Hagen - Buddhism plain and simple

Heart over mind

V:102
The mind is always deceived by the heart.

La Rochefoucauld - Maxims

A satisfied mind is a stupid one

When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness. No powerful mind stops whitin itself: it is always stretching out and exceeding its capacities. It makes sorties which go beyond what it can achieve: it is only half-alive if it is not advanced, pressing forward, getting driven into a corner and coming to blows; its inquiries are shapeless and without limits; its nourishment consists in amazement, the hunt and uncertainty...

Michel de Montaigne - Essays, On experience (III, 13)

Don't be a slave of your humours and complections

We should not nail ourselves so strongly to our humours and complexions. Our main talent lies in knowing how to adapt ourselves to a variety of customs. To keep ourselves bound by the bonds of necessity to one single way of life is to be, but not to live. Souls are most beautiful when they show most variety and flexibility.

If it was for me to train myself my way, there would be no mould in which I would wish to be set without being able to throw it off. Life is a rough, irregular progress with a multitude of forms. It is to be no friend of yourself - and even less master of yourself - to be a slave endlessly following yourself, so beholden to your predispositions that you cannot stray from them not bend them.

Michel de Montaigne - Essays, On tree kinds of social intercourse (III, 3)

Man's only power - his MIND

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of though. From this simple necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead