Strike, with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim,… - Robert Green Ingersoll

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Strike, with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh — the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.

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About Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) was a lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic".

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Also Known As

Alternative Names: Robert Ingersoll The Great Agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll
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Additional quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

A minister says to me that I am going to hell—that I am bound to be punished forever and ever—and thereupon I say to him: “There is no hell you are mistaken; your Bible is not inspired; no human being is to suffer agony forever;” and thereupon, with an injured look, he asks me this question: “Why do you hurt my feelings?” It does not occur to him that I have the slightest right to object to his sentence of eternal grief.

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no success in life without love and marriage. You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success.

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Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling the world and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down and on its top a human being. A few men went out to the rescue. They found there a woman, a mother, and they wished to save her life. She said: “No, I am going to stay where I am. In this house I have three dead babes; I will not desert them.” Think of a love so limitless—stronger and deeper than despair and death! And yet, the Christian religion says, that if that woman, that mother, did not happen to believe in their creed God would send her soul to eternal fire!

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