“Christianity is a pestilent superstition.”

No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.

Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

It is a part of the nature of man to resist compulsion.

The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.

Every recreant who proved his timidity in the hour of danger, was afterwards boldest in words and tongue.

When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.

The changeful change of circumstances. [Lat., Varia sors rerum.]

Even honor and virtue make enemies, condemning, as they do, their opposites by too close a contrast.

Even for learned men, love of fame is the last thing to be given up.

We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.

Following Emporer Nero’s command, “Let the Christians be exterminated!:” . . . they [the Christians] were made the subjects of sport; they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.

There can never be a complete confidence in a power which is excessive.

Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies. [Lat., Pessimum genus inimicorum laudantes.]

It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.

Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen.

I decided I got to say whether I was Christian or not, and so I’ve relaxed enormously since then. I’m the one who gets to say that, and not someone else.

False self is an identity based on what you have, what you do, and what others think about you. In stark contrast to this is the true self in Christ, which is who we are before God and in God – Christ living in us, as Paul put it to the churches in Galatia.

Worry about tomorrow steals the joy from today.

No one can claim to be called Christian who gives money for the building of warships and arsenals.

I never meant to marry. In my opinion, a woman born in the last half of the nineteenth century of the Christian era suffered from enough disadvantages without willfully embracing another.

The Christians seized all the maize the locals of Nicaragua had grown for themselves and their own families and, as a consequence, some twenty or thirty thousand natives died of hunger, some mothers even killing their own children and eating them.