If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.

Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.

The materialist assumption that spiritual substances do not exist is as much an act of faith as the religious belief in the reality of angels.

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.

I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.