Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll occupies a unique position. He is to a large extent the product of his own generation. A man of the times, for the times. He has had no predecessor, he will have no successor.
I am a believer in fashion. It is the duty of every woman to make herself as beautiful and attractive as she possibly can. "Handsome is as handsome does," but she is much handso...
16. Part 16A trial for heresy means that the spirit of persecution still lingers in the Church; that it still denies the right of private judgment; that it still thinks more of creed than...
11. Part 11England was filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony. All religious conceptions were of the grossest nature. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant poets were taken...
5. Part 5The soldiers of the Union saved the South as well as the North. They made us a Nation. Their victory made us free and rendered tyranny in every other land as insecure as snow up...
3. Part 3Is it nothing to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exa...
7. Part 7What would the church people think if the theatrical people should attempt to suppress the churches? What harm would it do to have an opera here tonight? It would elevate us mor...
8. Part 8Paine thought the barbarities of the Old Testament inconsistent with what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder, massacre and indiscriminate slaughter had...
9. Part 9If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of...
14. Part 14A very curious thing about these Commandments is that their supposed author violated nearly every one. From Sinai, according to the account, He said: "Thou shalt not kill," and...
1. Part 1Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll occupies a unique position. He is to a large extent the product of his own generation. A man of the times, for the times. He has had no predecessor,...
15. Part 15Consequences determine the quality of an action. If consequences are good, so is the action. If actions had no consequences, they would be neither good nor bad. Man did not get...
4. Part 4Suppose there was a great horse-race here to-day, free to every horse in the world, and to all the mules, and all the scrubs, and all the donkeys. At the tap of the drum they co...
6. Part 6Redden your hands with human blood; blast by slander the fair fame of the innocent; strangle the smiling child upon its mother's knees; deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful gi...
13. Part 13But the believer in the inspiration of the Bible is compelled to declare that there was a time when slavery was right--when men could buy and women sell their babes. He is compe...
12. Part 12Can we believe that the inspired writer had any idea of the size of the sun? Draw a circle five inches in diameter, and by its side thrust a pin through the paper. The hole made...
10. Part 10Diderot was born in 1713. His parents were in what may be called the humbler walks of life. Like Voltaire, he was educated by the Jesuits. He had in him something of the vagabon...
17. Part 17The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sound of preparation--the music of the boisterous drums--th...