Mark Twain

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.

The Christian ethic played an essential part in my upbringing.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it’s the universe that’s breathing.

What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.

What you possess, you lose.

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

[On religion:] Wasn’t it invented by man for a kind of solace? It’s as though he had said, ‘I’ll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,’ and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.