In our daily life a certain way of thinking makes us happy, and a certain way of thinking makes us unhappy. In other words, there are certain states of mind which bring us problems, and they can be removed.
A very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross.
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.
But that from us aught should ascend to Heav'n So prevalent as to concern the mind Of God, high-bless'd, or to incline His will, Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer.
Such a mind we must desire to see in a woman,--a mind that stirs without irritating you, that arouses but does not belabour, amuses and yet subtly instructs.
It is within this fathoms-long carcass, with its mind and its notions, that I declare there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation of the world.
The mind may accept or deny that you are awareness, but either way it can’t really understand. It cannot comprehend. Thought cannot comprehend what is beyond thought.
Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour.