Langston Hughes "sought to counter, as best he could, his almost ineradicable reputation as an atheist. However, he made no effort to appear pious in public, and attached himself to no church."

Wrote Burns in "Epistle to Rev. John McMath," "But twenty times I rather would be // An atheist clean, // Than under gospel colours hid be // Just for a screen."

Schiller called him "the Empire's first servant." A poem, written shortly before his death, expresses Hadrian's religious skepticism.

“I do not believe in any revealed religion. I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another.”

Arnold was a leading literary critic and wrote many essays, which displayed a seriously Rationalist streak. He denied belief in immortality and a personal God.

Heine's works carry many caustic references to religion — and a warning: "Wherever books will be burned, men also, in the end, are burned.

"In regard to religious matters," he wrote, "there is an intellectual cowardice instilled into the minds of the people from their infancy; to inquire or exert their reason is denounced as sinful."

Not only is his advanced Rationalism found in his works — these include Poems and Songs and Absalom's Hair) — but he translated Robert Ingersoll for the Norwegian audience.

I also leave my religion to Dr. Cutts Barton… hereby empowering the Sub-Sacrist to strike him on the head when he goes to sleep in church… I leave the Reverend Mr. Catcott some little of my free thinking, that he may put on spectacles of reason and see how vilely he is duped in believing the scriptures literally.

"Though he remains an agnostic," McCabe write of his personal relationship with Phillpotts, "in recent years he has become milder and more conservative."