The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.