Life is a continual alternation of rest and action, of the need of comfort and the need of power.

... we all know how to pray better than we practice what we know!

the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. ... It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.

religion is perhaps its own worst enemy. For religion, masquerading under the guise of archaic creeds, and impossible literalisms, and ecclesiasticism indifferent to human needs, has brought about an inevitable and in many respects wholesome revulsion.

Many now veer away from the time-honored use of the term Father as applied to the Christian God ... This difficulty rests mainly, I believe, on failure to distinguish between a symbol and a definition.

The perpetual danger which besets religion is that it may substitute gentility and aestheticism for prophetic insight and power.

Religion is the most widely debated and least agreed upon phenomenon of human history.