Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

In any close society it is more urgent to restrain others than to be free oneself. Hence the tendency for the central authority to absorb and supersede such as are local or delegated.

A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.