The only faults considered grave are the following: not respecting the rights of one's neighbor, letting oneself be paralyzed by fear, feeling guilty, thinking one does not deserve the good and bad which occurs in life, and being a coward.
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?
The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
For the longest time, I was just playing music and not really expecting any success - just kind of doing it because I liked doing it. While doing that, I went on a lot of shitty tours, playing to nobody, so I think it makes me appreciate it. Our band the New Pornographers have been popular for a few years now, but it still shocks me. I remember thinking we were hugely popular when we sold 15,000 records, and now this one sold 30,000 in two weeks. I'm grateful for the whole thing.
Think always: I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How can I do anything evil? Can I ever be befooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth? Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.
Curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the most outstanding characteristic of modern thinking ... Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity, and the less they are deflected by the consideration of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare, but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest, which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times.
I think when you're governing, it will become increasingly apparent that if you were to just eliminate trade deals with Mexico, for example, well, you've got a global supply chain. The parts that are allowing auto plants that were about to shut down to now employ double shifts is because they're bringing in some of those parts to assemble out of Mexico. And so it's not as simple as it might have seemed.
Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.
That kind of skeptical, questioning, "don't accept what authority tells you" attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.
I think the Internet has a way of coaching you into this state of mind where you think that every step you make needs to completely supersede the last.
Perhaps the chief cause which has retarded the progress of poetry in America, is the want of that exclusive cultivation, which so noble a branch of literature would seem to require. Few here think of relying upon the exertion of poetic talent for a livelihood, and of making literature the profession of life. The bar or the pulpit claims the greater part of the scholar's existence, and poetry is made its pastime.
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.