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

A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts.

For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.

If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters.