And thus is it, my lord, that upon these matters we Mardians all agree and disagree together, and kill each other with weapons that burst in our hands.

Ah, my lord, with what mind must blessed Oro look down upon this scene! Think you he discriminates between the deist and atheist?
Nay; for the Searcher of the cores of all hearts well knoweth that atheists there are none.

For in things abstract, men but differ in the sounds that come from their mouths, and not in the wordless thoughts lying at the bottom of their beings.
The universe is all of one mind.

Though my twin-brother sware to me, by the blazing sun in heaven at noon-day, that Oro is not; yet would he belie the thing he intended to express.

And who lives that blasphemes?
What jargon of human sounds so puissant as to insult the unutterable majesty divine?
Is Oro's honor in the keeping of Mardi ?-- Oro's conscience in man's hands?
Where our warrant, with Oro's sign- manual, to justify the killing, burning, and destroying, or far worse, the social persecutions we institute in his behalf?
Ah! how shall these self-assumed attorneys and vicegerents be astounded, when they shall see all heaven peopled with heretics and heathens, and all hell nodding over with miters! Ah! let us Mardians quit this insanity.