If the gods made man, which I doubt, they should have made him so he sometimes enjoyed what he has instead of forever yearning for what he has not. - L. Sprague de Camp

All we can say for sure is that monotheism proved as deadly a foe to learning as war and barbarism. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

I have deeply studied the female mind. Somewhat to my surprise, I found it, not the same as the male, but on balance quite as able.

It was very puzzling. Why had all this happened to her? In the old days, according to her researches, one blamed a jealous or capricious god for one’s undeserved misfortunes, but nobody had taken the gods seriously for generations. It was, thinkers agreed, a case of the mysterious operations of luck. Emotionally, however, blind chance was a poor substitute for a god when you wanted something on which to turn your resentment at the hard treatment accorded you by fate.