I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.
The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.
In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even.
Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine.
There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtlest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.
Heal yourselves, doctors; by God I live.
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n’t my business to be “seeking the spirit,” but as much its business to be seeking me.
One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.
The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.
The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.
Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.
As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.