Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.

The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.

The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.

Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty.