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

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.

Fear first created the gods.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

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.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect...