"What does it matter whether we live again or not as long as we live cleanly and do our work honestly while we are alive?
Surely if we leave this world a little bit better, a little bit richer in knowledge, than we find it, these poor little lives of ours, such as they are, and that's not much--will not have been lived in vain.
Of course, as you know, I'm just a common, low-down materialist who can't rise to the poetry of things as you can with this gorgeous theory of re-incarnation of yours.
"I should very much like to believe it if I could, as I once said to an eminent revivalist on the war-path in the States; but the trouble with a man who is honest with himself is that he can no more make himself believe what doesn't seem true to him than he can make himself hungry when he isn't.

All the horrible history of religious persecution is just the story of a lot of bigots in power trying to force helpless people to do what they couldn't do honestly.

The awful part of the business is that they were most likely all wrong, and didn't know it." "But, at least, Professor, I hope you are able to give them credit for honest intentions, however mistaken they might have been ?" interposed Merrill, who was the son of a country parson and had so far preserved his simple faith intact.

It may be remarked here, that Nitocris was well aware of this, and loved her strong-souled sailor all the better for it.
Franklin Marmion did not, but then he thought any creed good enough for "a mere fighting man." "There were schemers and scoundrels among them on both sides, sir," replied the American quietly.

"The temptation was too big; but I am quite willing to allow that the majority of them, even the Inquisitors, were honest zealots who really did think it right to produce any amount of suffering and misery here on earth in order to get matters straightened out, as they thought, hereafter.