You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with.

I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.

[John] Calvin treats experience as essentially visionary and revelatory from moment to moment, addressed to the individual perceiver, the individual soul. Where this is assumed preconceptions can only distract and obscure, though, of course, as human beings we can never wholly free ourselves of them.

Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.

When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.

You have to live with your mind your whole life.