Directing the process by the mind can only lead to difficulty, for the mind does not know. Commitment to the Truth is sufficient for the process to unfold.
He whose longing has been aroused for the indescribable, whose mind has been quickened by it, and whose thought is not attached to sensuality is truly called one who is bound upstream.
If you have done good, set your mind upon it so that it may be repeated over and over again. Allow yourself to be pleased by good. Accumulating good is joyful.
Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.
Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.
Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.
Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.
Contemplating the suffering which is unbearable to us, and is unbearable to others, too, can produce awake mind, which arises from the compassion that wishes to free all living beings from suffering.