Josiah Sutton

“Let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“A common response in surveys of religious attitudes is to say something like, 'I don't go to church, but I have my own personal idea of God.' This kind of statement makes me in turn react like a philosopher. Soppy, I cry. You have your own personal idea of God, but does God have His own personal idea of you? Because that's what matters. Whether He's an old man with a white beard sitting in the sky, or a life force, or a disinterested prime mover, or a clockmaker, or a woman, or a nebulous moral force, or nothing at all, what counts is what He, She, It, or Nothing thinks of you rather than you of them.”
― Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of

“But everywhere the religious dance came before the religious hymn, and man was a ritualist before he could speak.”
― g.k. chesterton, Heretics