Moncure D. Conway, LL.D.: "It ['Age of Reason'] represents, as no elaborate treatise could, the agony and bloody sweat of a heart breaking in the presence of crucified Humanity. What dear heads, what noble hearts had that man seen laid low; what shrieks had he heard in the desolate homes of the Condorcets, the Brissots; what Canaanite and Midianite massacres had be seen before the altar of Brotherhood, erected by himself! And all because every human being had been taught from his cradle that there is something more sacred than humanity, and to which man should be sacrificed. Of all those massacred thinkers not one voice remains: they have gone silent: over their reeking guillotine sits the gloating Apollyon of Inhumanity. But here is one man, a prisoner, preparing for his long silence. He alone can speak for those slain between the throne and the altar. In these outbursts of laughter and tears, these outcries that think not of literary style, these appeals from surrounding chaos to the starry realm of order, from the tribune of vengeance to the sun shining for all, this passionate horror of cruelty in the powerful which will brave a heartless heaven or hell with its immortal indignation,--in all these the unfettered mind may hear the wail of enthralled Europe, sinking back choked with its blood, under the chain it tried to break. So long as a link remains of the same chain, binding reason or heart, Paine's 'Age of Reason' will live. It is not a mere book--it is a man's heart." Edgar W. Howe: "The storm that arose over this book was never before equaled: it will never be equaled again." Dr. Bond (A surgeon belonging to General O'Hara's staff): "Mr. Paine while hourly expecting to die, read to me parts of his 'Age of Reason'; and every night when I left him, to be separately locked up, and expected not to see him alive in the morning, he always expressed his firm belief in the principles of that book, and begged I would tell the world such were his dying opinions." "The doctrines and sentiments which it contains may justly be regarded as the expressions of a dying man."--_D. M. Bennett._ "When it [first part] appeared he was a prisoner; his life in Couthon's hands. He had personally nothing to gain by its publication--neither wife, child, nor relative to reap benefit by its sale. It was published as purely for the good of mankind as any work ever written."--_Dr. Conway_. "While in prison he composed the second part, and as he expected every day to be guillotined it was penned in the very presence of death."--_George W. Foote._ "Paine deserves whatever credit is due to absolute devotion to a creed believed by himself to be demonstrably true and beneficial. He showed undeniable courage, and is free from any suspicion of mercenary motives."--_Sir Leslie Stephen._