The stink of madness is unsubtle here. Let us be going. - Tanith Lee

As for their healers and their worship of gold books of old lore, there had been tribal stories of this, too, all nonsense, as anything chattered by the ill-informed must be.

The dark storyteller did not look about. He said: “You have presumed the gods value man so much that they will hurry to his rescue. I think you misjudge the gods.”
“And you,” declared the philosopher sternly, “suggest that they are merely as stones.”
“There, I admit, I have maligned them. For if you strike a stone, it may disgorge a stream of water, or a precious jewel. Or you may build a house from it, or scratch words on its surface with a knife. Stones can be serviceable to men.”

His creed, both cosmic and precise, had a flexible simplicity which, usually, was soon harnessed and complicated by his devotees, or those who had picked up some smattering.