Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ʿreligionʾ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.

Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one.

Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.