The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.
When struck on one cheek to turn the other, is really joining a conspiracy to secure the triumph of brutality. To agree not to resist evil is to become an accomplice of all injustice.
No man should kill himself as long as he can be of the least use to anybody, and if you cannot find some person that you are willing to do something for, find a good dog and take care of him. You have no idea how much better you will feel.
To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.
I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this.
There is in all artists a little of the vagabond.
If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.
Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.
The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.
There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.
The undressed is vulgar; the nude is pure, and the well-dressed tainted.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings.
God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god.
I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.
Nothing discloses character like the use of power.
This, in my judgment, is the highest philosophy: First, do not regret having lost yesterday; second, do not fear that you will lose tomorrow; third, enjoy today.
Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty, and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment.
The first step is for man to cease to be the slave of man. The second, is to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own creation, the ghosts and phantoms of the air.
Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity.
Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance.