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.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

A country without a memory is a country of madmen.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.