“What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?”

All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

My body is but the lees of my better being.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!

What you should do is to say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.