“No,” said Travec, “religions, cults, rituals—forms of insanity—don’t interest me.” - Jack Vance

“And the moral?”
“It is certainly clear. Things are not always what they seem.”

Money lost, little lost.
Honor lost, much lost.
Pluck lost, all lost.

His decision was preordained, and derived from a perverse quirk in his mentality. At his deepest, most essential level, Hack knew himself for an insipid mediocrity, of no intellectual distinction and no particular competence in any direction. This was an insight so shocking that Hack never allowed it past the threshold of consciousness, and he conducted himself as if the reverse were true.