Quote of the Day (Thornton Wilder, on ‘Hope Before the Court of Reason’)

"So defenseless is hope before the court of reason that it stands in constant need of fashioning its own confirmations. It reaches out to heroic song and story; it stoops to superstition. It shrinks from flattering consolations; it likes its battles hard won, but it surrounds itself with ceremonial and fetish."— Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel (1967)