The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine - the climate - of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned.

If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven,it is when we pass a home in winter, at night,and through the windows, the curtains drawn aside,we see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn;the children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knivesor somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring blast;the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of domestic joy.I never passed such a house without feeling thatI had received a benediction.