I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse... Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.

..(T)here are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.

Remember He is the artist and you are the picture. You can’t see it, you can't see your true self. So quietly submit to be painted.

You can't know, you can only believe - or not.

All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous happiness; was it an elf in the blood? Or a bird in the brain? Or even part of the cloudily crested, fifty-league-long, loud, uplifted wave of a journeying angels transit over and through my heart?

The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own.