If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

...there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen.

...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative.

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.