Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect...

All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.

There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.