Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause.

The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always different from what was expected. Everything new is received with contempt-for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.

It is as clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God and that there can be none.

As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.

My only wish isto transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are half animal, half angel into persons, into whole persons.