Dating at least from ancient Rome, the holiday was a time of public and communal celebration, a time to commemorate some event of ...civic or religious significance that all citizens participated in equally. The set of holidays observed by a given community was a way of defining that community. Each holiday, with its unique history and set of rituals, connected the members of a community to one another, and to the community's collective past. The holiday was fundamentally noneconomic in character. Everyone participated, independent of economic circumstances.... In contrast, the vacation is thoroughly private and economic. People negotiate for paid vacations with their employers. They decide whether to spend their money on vacations or on things, in a way that they never would with holidays. Imagine asking whether to buy a new car or celebrate Easter. The point of a vacation is not to join in celebration with other members of the community but to escape it--at least for a while. People take vacations for a change of scene, and they take them alone, or just with their families.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or... snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing... that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience is held by the same ...tenure with all our rights. [The legislature] are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred, [or] we must say, that they may control freedom of the press, may abolish the trial by jury, may swallow the Executive and the Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage ... or we must say, that they have no authority to enact [a religious assessment].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence conte...mplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Religious establishment] is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity ... [because] with an ignoble and unchristian t...imidity it would [be] circumscribed, with a wall of defence, against the encroachments of error.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is it not singular that, while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old testaments, here are some coming slowly ...after, on the seashore, picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books, and putting them together again?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their ...religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Religious fervor makes the devil a very real personage, and anything awe-inspiring or not easily understood is usually connected w...ith him. Perhaps this explains why, not only in the Ozarks but all over the State, his name crops up so frequently.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »