“It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style.”

“If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.”

“People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters,” Ty said.
“So it is like believing in God.”
“Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty.”

“We such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.”

“I made these little verses, another took the honor.”
Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.

“The only person who could make me stop singing is the one who made me sing: God, the beauty up there!”

“If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.”

“Why pray to a god who would rather speak through say, a stone? Too bad that God made so many people who are interested in music and so few stones who are.”

“Yea, Custance, better (they say) a bad excuse than none.”

“every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.”