Laudator Temporis Acti

George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1925), p. 133:

This admission, Socrates, does not remove the objection which I have to meddlesome censors calling themselves philanthropists, but abounding only in their own conceit, and wedded to their nostrums.

Id., p. 139:

From the beginning we are compelled to put up with our parents, our country, our times, and the relentless approach of old age and death; and on the way we are lucky if we escape disease, deformity, crossed hopes, or desperate poverty.

Id., p. 158:

They say that there are poisons to which an organism may accustom itself, so that they may become elements of defence within it against other evils, perhaps more deadly. Christianity among us is one of these domesticated evils or tonic poisons, like the army, the government, the family, and the school; all of them traditional crutches with which, though limping, we manage to walk.

Id.:

I thanked the gods when I was alive for having been born a Greek and not a barbarian, and now that I am dead I thank them that I died in time, lest I should have become a Christian.