belief is the opposite of faith

belief: insistance that truth is whatever i believe it to be
faith: an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth

belief clings, and faith lets go

you cannot capture a river in a bucket. to have running water, you must let go of it and let it run.

the hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide. some of himself is already dead.

the power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. the present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been cleared up, and the future is bright with promise.

after all, the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. thus to plan for a future which is not going to become the present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me "absent", looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into its face.

strangers and pilgrims

for if our desires are out of accord with anything that the finite world can offer, it might seem that our nature is not of this world, that our hearts are made, not for the finite, but for infinity.

the discontent of our souls would appear to be the sign and seal of their divinity

Consciousness seems to be nature's ingenious mode of self-torture.