A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.
The human mind thinks but to complicate. As soon as one problem is solved, that solution introduces new complications, other problems that perhaps did not exist before. That was one of my great troubles when I was younger, I invented many things that were very fine, but always I was getting into complications. I have had to work very hard to overcome that.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.
A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.
Teaching is not the mere imparting of information but the cultivation of an inquiring mind which will penetrate into the question of what is religion and not merely accept the established religions, churches, and rituals.
I attain a different kind of beauty, achieve a symmetry by means of infinite discords, showing all the traces of the mind's passage through the world, achieve in the end some kind of whole made of shivering fragments.
After having stopped the lower activities of the mind, it must be made receptive; and, instead of weaving all kinds of empty and idle thoughts, the mind should receive intuitions from above.