“there are sicknesses that walk in darkness, and there are exterminating angels who fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature; whom we cannot see but we feel their foorce and sink under their sword.”

“I think: perhaps the sky is a huge sea of fresh water and we, instead of walking under it, walk on top of it; perhaps we see everything upside down and the earth is a kind of sky, so that when we die, when we die, we fall and sink into the sky.The Implacable Order of Things”

“When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.{Letter to John Adams, from Monticello, 15 August 1820}”

“Human beings by their very nature are worshipers. Worship is not something we do; it defines who we are. You cannot divide human beings into those who worship and those who don’t. Everybody worships; it’s just a matter of what, or whom, we serve.”

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

“waiting is our destiny. as creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for; we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. we wait in fear for a happy ending that we cannot write. we wait for a 'not yet' that feels like a 'not ever.”