Let us not flutter too high, but remain by the manger and the swaddlin — Martin Luther

"It is an article of faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a Virgin."

"There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know."

"But since the devils bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks shes wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devils greatest whore."

"Dear rulers … I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. … If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men."

"The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good."

"If it were art to overcome heresy with fire, the executioners would be the most learned doctors on earth."

"Even if we end terror and even if we eliminate tension, even if we reduce arms and restrict conflict, even if peace were to come to the nations, we would turn from this struggle only to find ourselves on a new battleground as filled with danger and as fraught with difficulty as any ever faced by man. For many of our most urgent problems do not spring from the cold war or even from the ambitions of our adversaries. These are the problems which will persist beyond the cold war. They are the ominous obstacles to mans effort to build a great world society--a place where every man can find a life free from hunger and disease-a life offering the chance to seek spiritual fulfillment unhampered by the degradation of bodily misery."

"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the waters edge."

"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."

"Necessità l ci nduce, e non diletto."

"Gentlemen look on this wonder, Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it, For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolld. In this head the all-baffling brain, In it and below it the makings of heroes. (7)"

"Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is calld Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."