“Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.”

“Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: ‘If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world’s wretchedness would rend my heart.”