Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.

Women are certainly more happy in this than we men: their employments occupy a smaller portion of their thoughts, and the earnest longing of the heart, the beautiful inner life of the fancy, always commands the greater part.

Virtue is only a conflict by which we get the mastery of our failings; that, by which every man proves his peculiar power of understanding the will and spirit of God, is only a silent working of the inner man.

Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.

The essence of the religious emotions consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.

Whenever I find a spark of that hidden fire that will sooner or later consume the old and create the new, I am drawn to it with love and hope, regarding it as a sign of my future home.

No God without a world, and no world without God.