Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.

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.

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

All beauties are to be honored, but only one embraced.

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.