The truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.

As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists in that heart alone - which is not, in some form or degree, in every human heart.

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?

Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.

I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.

If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.

No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.