“Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life, which makes the desert blossom as the rose, and which glorifies the common things and common ways of earth. It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin and darkness ... Even in the unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the passion which it could not entirely exclude, and permitted it coarsely to exist for the mere necessity of procreation.”
Quote by Ouida
“In its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.”
Source: Views and Opinions
“Christianity has been cruel in much to the human race. It has quenched much of the sweet joy and gladness of life; it has caused the natural passions and affections of it to be held as sins.”
Source: Views and Opinions
“Christianity ... has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on the rack; all this it has done, and done in the name of God.”
“Humiliation is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready his resting-place, and will give him a fair welcome. ... no one can disgrace you save yourself.”
Source: Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies, Vol. 2 of 3 (Classic Reprint)
“I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.”
Source: Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies
“you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some one else's, and the haul too.”
Source: Puck. In Maremma
“The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.”
Source: The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.”
Source: The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in one volume: including the poems, philosophic and inspirational essays, and biographical studies
“As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.”
Source: The plays of William Shakespeare: in twenty-one volumes, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, to which are added notes
“Men in all ways are better than they seem.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)
