Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 81. An anecdote is related of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621–1683), who, in speaking of religion, said, "People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion." To the inquiry of "What religion?" the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it", reported in Burnet, History of my own Times, vol. i. p. 175, note (edition 1833).
“I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.”
Lectures and Biographical Sketches, The Preacher
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
"Greeting to the newly integrated illuminatos dirigentes", in Nachtrag von weitern Originalschriften vol. 2 (1787) p. 45.
“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”
This was declared without citation to have been attributed to Avicenna in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia : A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950), by Joseph McCabe, p. 43; it was also later wrongly attributed to Averroes in The Atheist World (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46. It actually originates as a statement by the atheist Al-Maʿarri, earlier translated into English in A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII : Freethought under Islam, p. 269, in the form: "The world holds two classes of men ; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
Misattributed
“Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.”
May 8, 1781
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)
“It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.”
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 187.
Religion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
Context: Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions.