It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.

It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.

Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.

The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.

There is no right government except good government.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.