The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.
As one boy said, 'I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about my parents when suddenly it hit me-if they're all that bad, how come I'm so wonderful'
Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.
I purpose publishing these Letters here in the world before I return to you. Two editions. One, unedited, for Bible readers and their children; the other, expurgated, for persons of refinement
when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are . Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.
Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do - and didn't save many, anyway. But if he had been damned for the race, that would have been act of a size proper to a god, and would have saved the whole race.
It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory - and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making.