It is pleasant, when the sea is high and the winds are dashing the waves about, to watch from the shores the struggles of another.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

Falling drops will at last wear away stone.

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air's embrace.

Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.