Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check.

If things are going well, religion and legislation are beneficial; if not, they are of no avail.

We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites And private hates with our defence of Heaven.