Richard Burton: “What nation, either in the West or in the East, has been able to cast out from its ceremonies every suspicion of its old idolatry? What are the mistletoe, the Irish wake, the Pardon of Brittany, the Carnival? Better far to consider the Meccan pilgrimage rites in the light of Evil-worship turned into lessons of Good than to philosophize about their strangeness, and to blunder in asserting them to be insignificant.”

“The more I study religion, the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself.”

“How melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories ‘are shadows, not substantial things.’”