Nothing, Perhaps, Is Strange, Once You Have

[religion Is A] Primitive Insurance Against Disaster. ... Originally Religion Was Merely A Function Of The Self-preservative Instinct. Offer Sacrifices To The Gods And Save Your Crops. And Even Christianity, After All, Insures Heavily Against The Flaws In This Life By Belief In Another.

The Ascendancy Over Men's Minds Of The Ruins Of The Stupendous Past, The Past Of History, Legend And Myth, At Once Factual And Fantastic, Stretching Back And Back Into Ages That Can But Be Surmised, Is Half-mystical In Basis. The Intoxication, At Once So Heady And So Devout, Is Not The Romantic Melancholy Engendered By Broken Towers And Mouldered Stones; It Is The Soaring Of The Imagination Into The High Empyrean Where Huge Episodes Are Tangled With Myths And Dreams; It Is The Stunning Impact Of World History On Its Amazed Heirs.

Miss My Daily Mass, And Have A Superstitious Feeling That Anything May Happen On The Days I Don't Go. However, Nothing In Particular Has.

The Last Sin, The Sin Against The Holy Ghost - To Lie To Oneself. Lying To Other People - That's A Small Thing In Comparison.

Once You Get To Know Your Neighbors, You Are No Longer Free, You Are All Tangled Up, You Have To Stop And Speak When You Are Out And You Never Feel Safe When You Are In.