I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have nor the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.

Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.

Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.