they follow nature as the most perfect guide to a good life. Now

Life is way wilder than I am comfortable with, way farther out, as we used to say, more magnificent, more deserving of awe and, I would add, more benevolent—well-meaning, kindly.

There is a vision for my life that is greater than my imagination can hold.

Thus it is necessary to commence from an inescapable duality: the finite is not the infinite.

God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived.

Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.

Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.

When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.

How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact!

It is a wonderful place, the moor, said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.

Scientists tend to risk theories they admire

If we find the answer to that (why the universe exists), it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. For then we would know the mind of God.