“In the matter of religion, I listen to no remonstrance, I acknowledge no decision, save that of the divine monitor within me. My conscience is my adviser, my audience, and my judge. It bade me write as I have written, without evasion, without disguise; it bids me to go on as I have begun, whatever the result may be. If, therefore, my religious opinions should be condemned, without a single exception, by every reader of the book, it will not make me regret having expressed them, and it will not prevent me from expressing them again. It is my earnest and sincere conviction' that those opinions are not only true, but also that they tend to elevate and purify the mind.”

— Winwood Reade (1872), The Martyrdom of Man (pg. 6)

“In the winter and spring it rolls, a languid stream, through a dry and dusty plain. But in the summer an extraordinary thing happens. The river grows troubled and swift; it turns red as blood, and then green; it rises, it swells, till at length, overflowing its banks, it covers the adjoining lands to the base of the hills on either side. The whole valley becomes a lake, from which the villages rise like islands, for they are built on artificial mounds. This catastrophe was welcomed by the Egyptians with religious gratitude and noisy mirth. When their fields had entirely disappeared, they thanked the gods and kept their harvest-home. ... the water which had thus risen was their life. Egypt is by nature a rainless desert, which the Nile, and the Nile only, converts into a garden [Garden of Eden] every year”

— Winwood Reade (1872), The Martyrdom of Man (pg. 9-10)