Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles if you knew all the facts .
Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press Form’s flesh around thought’s rib, and so derive From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.
Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.
Let those who think the soul is shallow rail, They must be warned before they dare to leap They’ll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail.
Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.
By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic .
Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers.
By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web. What man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.
Dullard: Someone who looks up a thing in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book.
It was a shameful thing that she had nothing of which to be ashamed.
This story is about love, which means that it is also about hate.
Give us power, give us light To holdall love within our breast’s small space.
The brain, knowing that a person can’t live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction.
Nature is an experimenter.
Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It’s impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural.
There are Universes begging for Gods, yet he hangs around this one looking for work.
Dreams haunted The Riverworld.
Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.
All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.
Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.