George Orwell

[Orwell, observing the loss of religious faith in Europe (which he applauded), remarked]

"For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire...It appears that the amputation of the soul isn't just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic."

quoted in an essay entitled "On The Grand Canyon Bus" by Philip Yancey from Christianity Today, September 2008 (p. 102)