Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance.

If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian -- it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born.

If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked.

Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed

It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.