“You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”

“Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the 'Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”

“Give a man a noble cause and he would fight to the death for what he believed in,but get the woman he loves to leave him and his once honourable principles would cease to be quite so important.”

“No man who says, 'I'm as good as you,' believes it. He would not say it if he did.”

“The fact was that he had ceased to believe not for this reason or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament.”

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”