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.

... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.

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

Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.