It Is Hard Work To Be Good

Christianity ... Has Produced The Iniquities Of The Inquisition, The Egotism And Celibacy Of The Monasteries, The Fury Of Religious Wars, The Ferocity Of The Hussite, Of The Catholic, Of The Puritan, Of The Spaniard, Of The Irish Orangeman And Of The Irish Papist; It Has Divided Families, Alienated Friends, Lighted The Torch Of Civil War, And Borne The Virgin And The Greybeard To The Burning Pile, Broken Delicate Limbs Upon The Wheel And Wrung The Souls And Bodies Of Innocent Creatures On The Rack; All This It Has Done, And Done In The Name Of God.

Love, The One Supreme, Unceasing Source Of Human Felicity, The One Sole Joy Which Lifts The Whole Mortal Existence Into The Empyrean, Was By It [christianity] Degraded Into The Mere Mechanical Action Of Reproduction.

If All Feeling For Grace And Beauty Were Not Extinguished In The Mass Of Mankind At The Actual Moment, Such A Method Of Locomotion As Cycling Could Never Have Found Acceptance; No Man Or Woman With The Slightest Aesthetic Sense Could Assume The Ludicrous Position Necessary For It.

The Radical Defect In Christianity Is That It Tried To Win The World By A Bribe, And It Has Become A Nullity.

Brussels Is A Gay Little City That Lies As Bright Within Its Girdle Of Woodland As Any Butterfly That Rests Upon Moss.