Excerpts from Micah Clarke, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[In speaking of a letter he's just received, Micah Clarke says] "Tis from the venerable carpenter who hath for many years been my adviser and friend. He is one who is religious without being sectarian, philosophic without being a partisan, and loving without being weak."
p. 1217 (Gutenberg Project edition)

[The carpenter, Zachariah Carpenter, writes to Micah] "I doubt not that you will find among your comrades some who are extreme sectaries, and others who are scoffers and disbelievers. Be advised by me, friend, and avoid both the one and the other. For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights. The mere brainless scoffer is, on the other hand, lower than the beast of the field, since he lacks the animal's self-respect and humble resignation."
p. 1220

Carol sent me this

Ad Coelum

At the muezzin's call for prayer,
The kneeling faithful thronged the square,
And on Pushkara's lofty height
The dark priest chanted Brahma's might.
Amid a monastery's weeds
And old Franciscan told his beads;
While to the synagogue there came
A Jew to praise Jehovah's name.
The one great God looked down and smiled
And counted each His loving child;
For Turk and Brahmin, monk and Jew
Had reached Him through the gods they knew.

--Harry Romaine, "Munsey's Magazine", Jan. 1895

Only one environmental conflict

“I believe there’s only one environmental conflict, and that’s between short-term and long-term thinking. In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it’s unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature.”

-Mollie Beattie, first woman to head the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Adams on prejudice

Before the [Continental] Congress had opened, John Adams had filled his diary with dismayed comments on the pervasive suspicion of New Englanders. A group of Philadelphia Quakers reminded the Massachusetts delegation that their ancestors had hanged several Quakers in the previous century and laws still barred the sect from the province. "We have numberless prejudices to remove here," Adams wrote to one friend back home. "We have been obliged to act with great delicacy and caution."
Liberty, by Thomas Fleming; page 94

My wish

If you choose not to believe the scientifically-verifiable laws that govern our world, perhaps you would move on to the heavenly world you do believe in, and leave this one to the care and keeping of those of us who do.

More wisdom

Abraham Lincoln said on November 21, 1864 "Corporations have been ENTHRONED and an era of corruption in high places will follow..."

Barry Goldwater, of all people, said this.

"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'"
Barry Goldwater