The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world

Visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber,

And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber

Of those who wake and live.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,

The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

I love Love — though he has wings,

And like light can flee.

Before we deny or believe the existence of anything, it is necessary that we should have a tolerably clear idea of what it is. The word "God," a vague word, has been, and will continue to be, the source of numberless errors, until it is erased from the nomenclature of philosophy. Does it imply "the soul of the universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle?" This it is impossible not to believe in; I may not be able to adduce proofs, but I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than any which can be advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity.

Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have

The worship of the world, but no repose.

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?

If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?

If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?

If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?

If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?

If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?

If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?

If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?

If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?

If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?

If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?

If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?

I loved a being, an idea of my own mind, which had no real existence. I concreted this abstract of perfection, I annexed this fictitious quality to the idea presented by a name; the being, whom that name signified, was by no means worthy of this. This is the truth: Unless I am determinedly blind -- unless I am resolved causelessly and selfishly to seek destruction, I must see it. Plain! is it not plain? I loved a being; the being, whom I loved, is not what she was; consequently, as love appertains to mind, and not body, she exists no longer. I regret when I find that she never existed, but in my mind; yet does it not border on wilful deception, deliberate, intentional self-deceit, to continue to love the body, when the soul is no more?

You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.

Love's very pain is sweet,

But its reward is in the world divine

Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!

Life may change, but it may fly not;

Hope may vanish, but can die not;

Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;

Love repulsed, — but it returneth!

Where eyes are shut, nothing can be seen.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

I have faint hopes: I have some it is true -- just enough to keep body and soul together.

I don't know where I am, where I will be. Future, present, past, is all a mist; it seems as if I had begun existence anew.

All love is sweet,

Given or returned. Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,

It makes the reptile equal to the God;

They who inspire it most are fortunate,

As I am now; but those who feel it most

Are happier still.

The Being who has influenced in the most memorable manner the opinions and the fortunes of the human species, is Jesus Christ. At this day, his name is connected with the devotional feelings of two hundred millions of the race of man. The institutions of the most civilized portions of the globe derive their authority from the sanction of his doctrines; he is the hero, the God, of our popular religion. His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effect of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and benignity, the devoted love borne to him by his adherents, suggested a persuasion to them that he was something divine. The supernatural events which the historians of this wonderful man subsequently asserted to have been connected with every gradation of his career, established the opinion.

We look around us ... we find that we exist, we find ourselves reasoning upon the mystery which involves our being ... we see virtue and vice, we see the light and darkness, each is separate, distinct; the line which divides them is glaringly perceptible; yet how racking it is to the soul, when enquiring into its own operations, to find that perfect virtue is very far from attainable, to find reason tainted by feeling, to see the mind when analysed exhibit a picture of irreconcileable inconsistencies, even when perhaps a moment before, it imagined that it had grasped the fleeting Phantom of virtue.

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