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.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

The true Christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger.

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.