aizaz

“Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.

As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.

As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born —a world furnished to
our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or
wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things,
and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross
feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is
the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it
but a sacrifice of the Creator?”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Happiness as an inescapable fate, not a pursuit.”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People

“The true nature of sorrow is boredom.”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People