"It is to be a book chiefly of conjectures and suggestions. I make no pretensions to any critical knowledge of the Zend or Bactrian language, and have for the most part had, as aids to interpretation, only the English text, furnished by Bleek (from Spiegal) and by Dr. Haug, with notes accompanying their translations." [p. i.]

"The fact that different scholars should differ in their interpretations, or that the same scholar should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one that possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be thrown on points hitherto doubtful and obscure—all this, which, in the hands of those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so formidable a weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the many, produces very little effect in the minds of those who understand the reason of these changes, and to whom each new change represents but a new step in the advance of the discovery of truth." [p. 13.] "Passages in the Veda or Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept, however irrational, the simplist phrases are tortured and mangled till at last they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta." [p. 13.] "I have not set out, either with any preconceived theory, or with any ambition to discover new meanings and interpretations. I am too well aware of my want of qualifications in the way of scholarship, to indulge, knowing naught of Zend and little indeed of Sanskrit—to indulge in any such inexcusable vanity and self-conceit." [p. 127.] "We can never be sure that an obscure text of these old hymns has not been corrupted; or that particular words have not, before or after they were written down, lost their original meanings, and received derivative ones; or that their real meaning is not unknown, or supposed to be what it never was; or that there is not error in identifying a particular Zend word with a particular Vedic word, especially as the true meaning of so many of the latter is unknown. [p. 141.]

"Much of the translation of the Veda, by Wilson, Müller and Muir is conjectoral. How much more this is the case with the Zend-Avesta, the reader has already seen in part, and will yet have ampler evidence." [p. 141.] "Etymological conclusions, based upon literal resemblances of words, are confessedly uncertain; and when to this is added, as in this case, scantiness of knowledge of Sanskrit and Zend, I cannot but have many misgivings as to the soundness of my deductions. But if the scholars fail to prove to me the meaning of a word, to my satisfaction, I must examine for myself." [p. 173.]

"Dr. Spiegel, also failed to see, I venture to think, the real meaning of the Gâthâs and much of the other writings of the Zend-Avesta." [p. 203.] "I think that neither Spiegel’s nor Haug’s translation can be correct. One thing is certain, that one or the other of them never translates correctly." [p. 227.] "Spiegel’s translation of this verse is nonsense, pure and simple. Haug’s makes sense, but the wrong sense, and a worthless sense." [p. 232.] "But there are distressing doubts as to the meaning of a vast number of passages in the Veda, and even of whole hymns, and no less doubt as to the meaning of a multitude of words, to give which theor later and modern meaning is simply to caricature the Veda. The translation of Professor Wilson, is often unintelligible nonsense, and it is very doubtful whether those of Muir and Müller are not often merely conjectural, and colored by special fancies in regard to the dieties and conceptions of the Vedic Aryans." [p. 97.] "I doubt the correctness of the translation, and the soundness of the interpretation. I do not believe that there is one allusion to a future existence or another world in the Veda, and not one in the Avesta, where the commentators and translators find ten." [p. 302.] "I need not point out the absurdities of this translation." [p. 313.]

"If everything is to be cramped and contorted to correspond with, or be made to yield to the absurd idea of the unity of the human race, i. e., the descent of all mankind from one man and one woman, by means of incestuous intercourse, inquiry as to pre-historic facts is utterly useless." [p. 35.]

"Why should we suppose that [the creative power of Nature or the Deity] has not, in the same manner, created at different periods the different varieties of the human race, each race, created after another, excelling it?" "Neither history nor tradition informs us of the changes of any white race into negroes, and it is impossible. And for my own part, I am glad to believe that there is no tie of blood-relationship between myself and the wooly and olio negro. I prefer to believe that I am of a higher and nobler strain and race" [p. 66.] "I do not believe in the possibility of the descent or outgrowth of all languages from one." "Darwin’s notion of the development of men from apes is not a whit more rational." [p. 82.] "The supreme chief was probably elected as the Germano-Aryans elected their kings, by the acclamations of the armies. No one knows how some of the American Indian tribes elect or select their chiefs. Perhaps, as the bees do their queen. But, in some way or other they succeed in selecting their wisest and best men; a faculty of which civilization seems to deprive mankind." [p. 579.] "Races and creeds degenerate alike. The old Aryan, Persian, Grecian, Roman and Teutonic nobleness of race has become what the gods regret having created, in more than one modern land. Instead of the noble and heroic rulers of the old simple ages, we have too often the low, the vulgar and the ill-bred, the sordid, mercenary and venal, in republics which always decay into intellectual decrepitude and tawdry vulgarity; and the mildewed and worm-eaten scions of royalty in kingdoms. And even so, as Vedaism rotted into the rankness of Brahmanism, and the Zarathustrian faith into Magism and the worship of the swarming gods of the aborigines, has the doctrine of Jesus, the Essenian Reformer, pure and simple morality, moulded and dry-rotted into effete Romanism, Methodism, and another hundred fungoid excretions; while the pulpit has become, too commonly, the stage for the cassocked histrio and mime, the tribune of the political pimp and termagant." [pp. 100-01.] "We find, also, here, full proof that the pure were the Aryans, all of them. It is not to be supposed that they were all pure, in our sense of that word, but they were all of the pure blood, and of the pure faith." [p. 268.] "Masses and thanksgiving always celebrate victories, and parsons who in time of Civil War steal the plate of the communion service from rebellious churches and convey it northward, thank God very devoutly for victories in war and triumphs achieved by means of all possible scoundrelisms in elections. "Of course we must still have the old Aryan notion of the vast efficacy of prayer, or we would not be willing to pay a larger aggregate tax to those who pray for us, than to those who govern us," [p. 383.]

"The world owes all its correct and profound conceptions of the Deity, and its knowledge of the existence of the human soul, to the great Aryan race." [p. 100.] "It is pleasant to know that there was a time once, seven thousand years ago, perhaps, when those of our blood and kin believed, contrary to the modern faith, that nations do not prosper by wrongdoing, nor truly greaten by lies." [p. 420.] "And also we may well and justly be gratified, that our Aryan race owes its code of morals, as little as it owes its theosophy, religion and philosophy to the Semitic race." [p. 421.]