He is deformed, crooked, old and sere, Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.
The mind that is cheerful in its present state, will be averse to all solicitude as to the future, and will meet the bitter occurrences of life with a placid smile.
Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness.
This is some fellow,
Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain,--he must speak truth!
And they will take it so; if not he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,
Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duty nicely.
if a person wishes to achieve peace of mind and happiness then they should acquire faith, but if they want to be a disciple of truth, which can be "frightening and ugly,” then they need to search.
pay attention to what I eat and to how I balance that with physical and mental exercise. The same way I want to spend time filling my mind with the best information I can acquire from the best sources I can obtain, I also want to consume nourishment from the best sources for my body.
Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.
Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.
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.