I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.
There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply - aware.
The mind is sicker than the sick body; in contemplation of its sufferings it becomes hopeless.
[Lat., Corpore sed mens est aegro magis aegra; malique
In circumspectu stat sine fine sui.]
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.
Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.
The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop; in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!
For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him.