The living have never shown me how to live.

The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.