“Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,I merely watch the plaguey state of men.The little god of earth remains the same queer spriteAs on the first day, or in primal light.His life would be less difficult, poor thing,Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;He calls it Reason, using light celestialJust to outdo the beasts in being bestial.To me he seems, with deference to Your Grace,One of those crickets, jumping round the place,Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;But, not content with grasses to repose in,This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.”

“Is our Heaven your God, and is your God our Heaven?' she inquired.'They are one and the same,' he replied...'There is only one true God. He has many names.''Then anywhere upon the round earth, by whatever seas, those who believe in any God believe in the One?' she asked.'And so are brothers,' he said, agreeing.'And if I do not believe in any?' she inquired willfully.'God is patient,' he said. 'God waits. Is there not eternity?”

“The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood.”

“The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".”

“I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom." "Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader.”

“It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.”