Crowding the Mind

The undue indulgence of the principle of curiosity, by filling the mind with that which is unprofitable, necessarily excludes much which is of essential value. There are undoubtedly limits to the mind's receptive capacity. And there is such a thing as filling and crowding it so completely with other things, as to exclude, in a great degree, the idea of God, and many important religious truths. How is it possible for God to dwell in a mind, that is already occupied, "pressed down and running over," if one may so express it, with idle thoughts, with foolish and romantic speculations, with the criminations and recriminations of party politics, with idle and often cruel and unjust village and neighborhood reports, which are indiscriminately sought and swallowed by the insatiable eagerness of this principle, when it has become excessive in its action?

— The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 2, Chapter 7.