We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.

Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.

Art like life, should be free, since both are experimental.

Love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.