Laudator Temporis Acti

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (New York: Pantheon, 1969), pp. 111-112 (Gregory Gladwell speaking):

But I think it was an extremely good thing that religion should be accepted as the saviour of civilization. So I think it right that it should be carried on. If you forsake religion, it's back to the savages. This is what is happening now. Whatever you think, this is what makes you. You don't have to tell folk everything you think. I have a lot of personal views about religion, for instance, which I never tell a soul. But I've often been tempted, particularly when I was young. I saw cases of men—grown men—in this village, packing their bait to spend the whole Sunday at chapel. People used to go to chapel at nine in the morning and not come home until eight at night. It is the truth. Most of them behaved shocking during the week. It's a fact. They were nothing but a lot of bloody hypocrites. Suffolk used to worship Sunday, not God. I don’t know why they all went to this trouble. Anybody with a mite of common sense could see how useless it was, chapel, chapel, chapel, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Best suits. They were Baptists. What were they trying to do? There were so many of them they could have set the whole village on its ear had they followed Jesus. But all you heard them say was Sunday. Bugger Sunday, I say, and praise God when you can. People never think why they go to church or chapel, they just go. It is very strange.

Id. (at 114):

I wasn't born soon enough, that is the trouble. By rights, I should be dead and gone. I think like the old people.... I feel I should have lived during the 1700s. That would have done me.

Id. (at 116):

I don't have a catalogue. I don't like making two of anything. I find out what people can either afford or mean to pay and do a design in keeping with the price. We like to think that when a customer gets something from the forge it is their individual thing. But how much longer we can stick it, I don't know. Not long, I fancy. The time must come when we shall have to settle down to a standard line. It will be a terrible pity if this should happen. So many smiths are just copying the old designs. And making a poor job of it. It is abusing the old tradesmen. I believe that we should work as they worked; this isn't copying, it is getting back into their ways, into their skins.