I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!

Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.

The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say 'charge it.' 'Put it on the slate.' The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.

A miracle is the badge and brand of fraud. ... No intelligent, honest man ever pretended to perform a miracle, and never will.

I have had some trouble in regarding evil as having been intended by infinite Goodness.

Laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime.

Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.